LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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MARGARET FULLER 



{MARCHESA OSSOLI). 



BY 



JULIA WARD HOWE. 




BOSTON: 
ROBERTS BROTHERS. 



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Copyright, 1883, 
By Roberts Brothers. 



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University Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



The present volume bears the name 
of Margaret Fuller simply, because it 
is by this name that its subject is most 
widely known and best remembered. 
Another name, indeed, became hers by 
marriage ; but this later style and title 
were borne by our friend for a short 
period only, and in a country remote 
from her own. It was as Margaret Fuller 
that she took her place among the lead- 
ing spirits of her time, and made her 
brave crusade against its unworthier fea- 
tures. The record of her brief days of 
wifehood and of motherhood is tenderly 
cherished by her friends, but the story of 
her life-work is best inscribed with the 



vi PREFATORY NOTE. 

name which was hers by birth and bap- 
tism, the name which, in her keeping, 
acquired a significance not to be lost 
nor altered. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

CHAPTER I. 
Childhood and Early Youth. — School-days i 

CHAPTER n. 

Life in Cambridge. — Friendship of Dr. Hedge and James Free- . 
man Clarke 19 

CHAPTER HI. 

Religious Behefs. — Margaret's Early Critics. — First Acquain- 
tance with Mr. Emerson 32 

CHAPTER IV. 

Art Studies. — Removal to Groton. — Meeting with Harriet Mar- 

tineau. — Death of Mr. Fuller. — Devotion to her Family . 44 

CHAPTER V. 

Winter in Boston. — A Season of Severe Labor. — Connection 
with Green-Street School, Providence, R. L — Editorship of 
the " Dial." — Margaret's estimate of Allston's pictures , . 61 

CHAPTER Vr. 

William Henry Channing's portrait of Margaret. — Transcenden- 
tal Days. — Brook Farm. — Margaret's visits there ... 84 



viii CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Margaret's love of children. — Visit to Concord after the death of 
Waldo Emerson. — Conversations in Boston. — Summer on 
the Lakes loo 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Farewell to Boston. — Engagement to write for the " New York 
Tribune." — Margaret in her new surroundings. — Mr. Gree- 
^ ley's opinion of Margaret's work. — Her estimate of George 
Sand 128 

CHAPTER IX. 

Margaret's residence at the Greeley mansion. — Appearance in 
New York society. — Visits to women imprisoned at Sing 
Sing and on Blackwell's Island. — Letters to her brothers. — 
" Woman in the Nineteenth Century." — Essay on American 
Literature. — View of contemporary Authors 140 

CHAPTER X. 

Ocean voyage. — Arrival at Liverpool. — The Lake Country. — 
Wordsworth. — Miss Martineau. — Edinburgh. — De Quin- 
cey. — Mary, Queen of Scots. — Night on Ben Lomond. — 
James Martineau. — William J. Fox. — London. — Joanna 
Baillie. — Mazzini. — Thomas Carlyle. — Margaret's impres- 
sions of him. — His estimate of her 170 

CHAPTER XI. 

Paris. — Margaret's reception there. — George Sand. — Chopin, — 
Rachel. — Lamennais. — Beranger. — Chamber of Deputies. 
— Berryer. — Ball at the Tuileries. — Italian Opera. — Alex- 
andre Vattem.re. — Schools and Reformatories. — Journey 
to Marseilles. — Genoa. — Leghorn. — Naples. — Rome . . 1S9 

CHAPTER XII. 

Margaret's first days in Rome. — Antiquities. — Visits to Studios 
and Galleries. — Her opinions concerning the Old Masters. — 



CONTENTS. IX 

PAGE 

Her sympathy with the People. — Pope Pius. — Celebration 
of the Birthday of Rome. — Perugia. — Bologna. — Raven- 
na. — Venice. — A State Ball on the Grand Canal. —Milan. — 
Manzoni. — The Italian Lakes. — Parma. — Second visit to 
Florence. — Grand Festival 205 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Period of agitation in Rome. — Margaret's zeal for Italian Free- 
dom. — Her return to Rome. — Review of the Civic Guard. — 
Church Fasts and Feasts. —Pope Pius. — The Rainy Sea- 
son. — Promise of Representative Government in Rome. — 
Celebration of this event. — Mazzini's Letter to the Pope. — 
Beauty of the Spring. — Italy in Revolution. — Popular ex- 
citements in Rome. — Pope Pius deserts the Cause of Free- 
dom. — Margaret leaves Rome for Aquila 219 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Margaret's marriage. — Character of the Marchese Ossoli. — Mar- 
garet's first meeting with him. — Reasons for not divulging 
the marriage. — Aquila. — Rieti. — Birth of Angelo Eugene 
Ossoli. — Margaret's return to Rome. — Her anxiety about 
her child. — Flight of Pope Pius. — The Constitutional As- 
sembly.— The Roman Republic. — Attitude of France.— 
The Siege of Rome. — Mazzini. — Princess Belgiojoso. — 
Margaret's care of the Hospitals 232 

CHAPTER XV. 

Siege of Rome. — Margaret's care of the sick and wounded. — 
Anxiety about her husband and child. — Battle between the 
French and Italian troops. — The Surrender. —Garibaldi's 
departure. — Margaret joins her husband at his post. — An- 
gelo's illness. — Letters from friends in America. — Perugia. 
Winter-in Florence. — Margaret's domestic life. — Aspect of 
her future. — Her courage and industry. — Ossoli's affection 
for her. — William Henry Hurlbut's reminiscences of them 
both, — Last days in Florence. — Farewell visit to the Duo- 
mo. — Margaret's evenings at home. — Horace Sumner. — 
Margaret as a friend of the people 245 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Margaret turns her face homeward. — Last letter to her mother. — 
The barque " EHzabeth." — Presages and omens. — Death of 
the captain. — Angelo's illness. — The wreck. — The long 
struggle. — The end 265 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Margaret Fuller's Literary Remains 280 



INDEX 



293 



MARGARET FULLER. 



CHAPTER I. 

CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. — SCHOOL DAYS. 

The subject of the following sketch, Sarah 
Margaret Fuller, has already been most for- 
tunate in her biographers. Cut off herself in the 
prime of life, she left behind her devoted friends 
who were still in their full vigor of thought and 
sentiment. Three of these, James Freeman 
Clarke, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William 
Henry Channing, set their hand, some thirty or 
more years ago, to the happy task of preserving 
for posterity their strong personal impressions 
of her character and influence. With these pre- 
cious reminiscences were interwoven such ex- 
tracts from her correspondence and diary as 
were deemed fittest to supply the outline of her 
own life and experience. 

What, it may be asked, can such biographers 
have left for others to do ? To surpass their 
work is not to be thought of. But, in the turn- 



2 MARGARET FULLER. 

ing and perseverance of this planet, present soon 
becomes past, and that which has been best 
said asks to be said again. This biography, 
so rich in its suggestions and so valuable in its 
details, is already set in a past light by the pro- 
gress of men and of things. Its theme has lost 
none of its interest. Nay, it is through the 
growing interest felt in Margaret and her work 
that a demand seems to have arisen for a later 
word about her, which cannot hope to be better 
or wiser than the words already made public, 
but which may borrow from them the inspiration 
for a new study and presentment. 

According to the authorities already estab- 
lished, Sarah Margaret Fuller, the child of Tim- 
othy Fuller and Margaret Crane, was born at 
Cambridgeport, near Boston, on the 23d of May, 
1 8 10. She has herself given some account of 
her early life in an autobiographical sketch 
which forms the prelude to the work already 
published. Her father, she says, **was a law- 
yer and a ^politician," the son of a country 
clergyman. Harvard-bred both as to his college 
and his professional studies. She remembers 
him chiefly as absorbed in the business and in- 
terest of his profession, intent upon compassing 
the support of his family, and achieving such 
distinction as might prove compatible with that 
object. Her mother she describes as "one of 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. 3 

those fair, flower-like natures, which sometimes 
spring up even beside the most dusty high- 
ways of Ufe, — bound by one law with the blue 
sky, the dew, and the frolic birds." And in the 
arduous labor of her father's life, his love for this 
sweet mother " was the green spot on which he 
stood apart from the commonplaces of a mere 
bread-winning, bread-bestowing existence." 

The case between Margaret and her father is 
the first to be disposed of in our consideration of 
her life and character. In the document just 
quoted from she does not paint him e7i bean. 
Here and elsewhere she seems to have been 
inclined to charge upon him the excessive study 
which exaggerated her natural precocity of tem- 
perament, and the Puritan austerity which 
brought her ungratified imagination into early 
conflict with the circumstances and surround- 
ings of her start in hfe. In a brief preface to the 
memoir already published, a surviving brother of 
Margaret characterizes this view of the father as 
inadequate and unjust. 

Margaret herself called her sketch an auto- 
biographical romance, and evidently wrote it at 
a period of her life in which her personal expe- 
rience had thrown little light upon the difficul- 
ties which parents encounter in the training of 
their children, and especially in that of their 
eldest-born. 



MARGARET FULLER. 

From the sketch itself we erather that the 



to' 



Fuller household, alihough not corresponding to 
the dreams of its wonder-child, had yet in it 
elements which were most precious for her right 
growth and development. The family itself was 
descended from a stock deeply thoughtful and 
religious. With the impulses of such kindred 
came to Margaret the strict and thrifty order of 
primitive New England life, the absence of frivol- 
ity, the distaste for all that is paltry and super- 
ficial. In after years, her riper judgment must 
have shown her, as it has shown many, the value 
of these somewhat stern surroundings. The 
little Puritan children grew up, it is true, in the 
presence of a standard of character and of con- 
duct which must have seemed severe to them. 
The results of such training have shown the 
world that the child so circumstanced will rise 
to the height of his teaching. Started on a 
solid and worthy plane of thought and of motive, 
he will not condescend to what is utterly mean, 
base, and trivial, either in motive or in act. If, 
as may happen, he fail in his first encounters 
with outside temptation, he will nevertheless 
severely judge his own follies, and will one 
day set himself to retrieve them with earnest 
diligence. 

In the instance before us we can feel how bit- 
*te|^ may have been the contrast between the 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. 5 

child's natural tastes and the realities which 
surrounded her. Routine and restraint were 
burdensome to her when as yet she could not 
know their value. Not the less were they of 
great importance to her. The surroundings, 
too, which were devoid of artistic luxury and 
adornment, forced her to have recourse to the 
inner sense of beauty, which is sometimes lost 
and overlaid through much pleasing of the eye 
and ear. 

Childhood, indeed, insists upon having the 
whole heavenly life unpacked upon the spot. 
Its to-day knows no to-morrow. Hence its 
common impatience and almost inevitable quar- 
rel with the older generation, which in its eyes 
represents privation and correction. 

The early plan of studies marked out for 
Margaret by her father was not devised by any 
commonplace mind. Mr. Fuller had gained 
from his own college life that love of culture 
which is valuable beyond any special attainment. 
His own scholarship had been more than com- 
mon, and it became his darling object to trans- 
mit to his little daughter all that he himself had 
gained by study, and as much more as his cir- 
cumstances would permit. He did indeed make 
the mistake, common in that day, of urging the 
tender intellect beyond the efforts proper to its 
stage of growth. Margaret says that the lessoAs 



6 MARGARET FULLER. 

set for her were " as many and various as the 
hours would allow, and on subjects far beyond 
my age." These lessons were recited to her 
father after office hours ; and as these hours 
were often prolonged, the child's mind was kept 
in a state of tension until long after the time 
when the little head should have rested serenely 
on its pillow. ''In consequence of this, it often 
rested very ill, and the youthful prodigy of the 
daytime was terrified at night by dreams and 
illusions, and disturbed by sleep-walking. From 
these efforts and excitements resulted, as she 
says, *'a state of being too active and too intense, 
which wasted my constitution, and will bring 
me, although I have learned to understand an*d 
to regulate my now morbid temperament, to a 
premature grave." 

This was unhappy, certainly. The keen, ac- 
tive temperament did indeed acquire a -morbid 
intensity, and the young creature thus spurred 
on to untimely effort began to live and to learn 
at a pace with which the slowness of circum- 
stance was never able to keep abreast. 

Even with the allowance which must be made 
for the notion of that time as to what a child 
should be able to accomplish, it must grieve and 
surprise us to find Margaret at the age of six 
years engaged in the study of Latin and of 
Enghsh grammar. Her father ''demanded ac- 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. / 

curacy and clearness in everything." Intelligi- 
ble statement, reasoned thought, and a certainty 
which excluded all suppositions and reserva- 
tions, — these were his requirements from his 
young pupil. A certain quasi-dogmdlic mode of 
enunciation in later life, which may have seemed, 
on a superficial view, to indicate an -undue con- 
fidence and assumption, had proljably its origin 
in the decided way in which the little Margaret 
was taught to recite her lessons. Under the con- 
trolling influence of her father, she says that her 
own world sank deep within, away from the 
surface of her life : " In what I did and said I 
learned to have reference to other minds, but 
my true life was only the dearer that it was 
secluded and veiled over by a thick curtain of 
available intellect and that coarse but wearable 
stuff woven by the ages, common sense." 

The. Latin language opened for Margaret 
the door to many delights. The Roman ideal, 
definite and resolute, commended itself to her 
childish judgment; and even in later life she 
recognized Virgil as worthy to lead the great 
Dante " through hell and to heaven." In Hor- 
ace she enjoyed the serene and courtly appre- 
ciation of life ; in Ovid, the first glimpse of 
a mythology which carried her to the Greek 
Olympus. Her study " soon ceased to be a 
burden, and reading became a habit and a pas- 



8 MARGARET FULLER. 

sion." Her first real friends she found in her 
father's book-closet, to which, in her leisure 
moments, she was allowed free access. Here, 
from a somewhat miscellaneous collection, she 
singled out the works of Shakespeare, Cervantes, 
and Moliere, — "three great authors, all, though 
of unequal, yet of congenial powers ; all of 
rich and wide, rather than aspiring genius ; 
all free to the extent of the horizon their eye 
took in ; all fresh with impulse, racy with expe- 
rience ; never to be lost sight of or superseded." 

Of these three Shakespeare was the first in 
her acquaintance, as in her esteem. She was 
but eight years old when the interest of Romeo 
and Juliet led her to rebel against the discipline 
whose force she so well knew, and to persevere 
in reading before her father's very eyes a book 
forbidden for the Sabbath. For this offence 
she was summarily dismissed to bed, where her 
father, coming presently to expostulate with 
her, found her in a strangely impenitent state 
of mind. 

Margaret's books thus supplied her imagina- 
tion with the food which her outward surround- 
ings did not afford. They did not, however, 
satisfy the cravings of her childish heart. These 
presently centred around a human object of in- 
tense interest, — a lady born and bred in polite 
European life, who brought something of its 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. g 

tone and atmosphere to cheer for a while the 
sombre New England horizon. Margaret seems 
to have first seen her at church, where the gen- 
eral aspect of things was especially distasteful 
to her. 

"The puny child sought everywhere for the 
Roman or Shakespeare figures ; and she was 
met by the shrewd, honest eye, the homely 
decency, or the smartness of a New England 
village on Sunday. There was beauty, but I 
could not see it then ; it was not of the kind 
I longed for. 

"As my eye one day was ranging about with 
its accustomed coldness, it was arrested by a 
face most fair, and well known, as it seemed at 
first glance ; for surely I had met her before, 
and waited for her long. But soon I saw that 
she was an apparition foreign to that scene, if 
not to me. She was an English lady, who, by 
a singular chance, was cast upon this region for 
a few months." 

This* stranger seems to have been as gracious 
as she was graceful. Margaret, after this first 
glimpse, saw her often, sometimes at a neigh- 
bor's house, sometimes at her own. She was 
more and m.ore impressed by her personal 
charm, which was heightened in the child's eyes 
by her accomplishments, rare in that time and 
place. The lady painted in oils and played on 



lO MARGARET FULLER. 

the harp. Margaret found the greatest delight 
in watching the growth of her friend's pictures, 
and in listening to her music. Better still, 
they walked together in the quiet of the coun- 
try. "Like a guardian spirit, she led me through 
the fields and groves ; and every tree, every bird, 
greeted me and said, what I felt, ' She is the first 
angel of your life.' " 

Delight so passionate led to a corresponding 
sorrow. The lady, who had tenderly responded 
to the child's mute adoration, vanished from her 
sight, and was thenceforth known to her only 
through the interchange of letters. 

" When this friend was withdrawn," says Mar- 
garet, " I fell into a profound depression. Mel- 
ancholy enfolded me in an atmosphere, as joy 
had done. This suffering, too, was out of the 
gradual and natural course. Those who are 
really children could not know such love or feel 
such sorrow." Her father saw in this depres- 
sion a result of the too great isolation in which 
Margaret had thus far lived. He felt that she 
needed change of scene and, still more, inter- 
course with girls of her own age. The remedy 
proposed was that she should be sent to school, 
— a measure which she regarded with dread and 
dislike. She had hitherto found little pleasure 
in the society of other girls. She had some- 
times joined the daughters of her neighbors 



SCHOOL DAYS. II 

in hard play, but had not felt herself at home 
with them. Her retired and studious life had, 
she says, given her "a cold aloofness," which 
could not predispose them in her favor. Despite 
her resistance, however, her father persevered 
in his intention, and Margaret became an inmate 
of the Misses Prescott's school in Groton, Mass. 

Her experience here, though painful in some 
respects, had an important effect upon her after 
life. 

At first her unlikeness to her companions 
was uncomfortable both to her and to them. 
Her exuberant fancy demanded outlets which 
the restraints of boarding-school life would not 
allow. The unwonted excitement produced by 
contact with other young people vented itself 
in fantastic acts, and freaks amusing but tor- 
menting. The art of living with one's kind had 
not formed a part of Margaret's home education. 
Her nervous system had already, no doubt, been 
seriously disturbed by overwork. 

Some plays were devised for the amusement 
of the pupils, and in these Margaret found her- 
self entirely at home. In each of these the 
principal part was naturally assigned her, and 
the superiority in which she delighted was thus 
recognized. These very triumphs, however, in 
the end led to her first severe mortification, and 
on this wise : — 



12 MARGARET FULLER. 

The use of rouge had been permitted to the 
girls on the occasion of the plays ; but Margaret 
was not disposed, when these were over, to 
relinquish the privilege, and continued daily to 
tinge her cheeks with artificial red. This freak 
suggested to her fellow-pupils an intended pleas- 
antry, which awakened her powers of resent- 
ment to the utmost. Margaret came to the 
dinner-table, one day, to find on the cheeks of 
pupils and preceptress the crimson spot with 
which she had persisted in adorning her own. 
Suppressed laughter, in which even the servants 
shared, made her aware of the intended carica- 
ture. Deeply wounded, and viewing the some- 
what personal joke in the light of an inflicted 
disgrace, Margaret's pride did not forsake her. 
She summoned to her aid the fortitude which 
some of her Romans had shown in trying mo- 
ments, and ate her dinner quietly, without com- 
ment. When the meal was over she hastened 
to her own room, locked the door, and fell on 
the floor in convulsions. Here teachers and 
schoolfellows sorrowfully found her, and did 
their utmost to soothe her wounded feelings, 
and to eflace by affectionate caresses the painful 
impression made by their inconsiderate fun. 

Margaret recovered from this excitement, and 
took her place among her companions, but with 
an altered countenance and embittered heart. 



SCHOOL DAYS. 1 3 

She had given up her gay freaks and amusing 
inventions, and devoted herself assiduously to 
her studies. But the offence which she had 
received ranlvled in her breast. As not one of 
her fellow-pupils had stood by her in her hour of 
need, she regarded them as all alike perfidious 
and ungrateful, and, " born for love, now hated 
all the world." 

This morbid condition of mind led to a result 
still more unhappy. Masking her real resent- 
ment beneath a calm exterior, Margaret received 
the confidences of her schoolfellows, and used 
their unguarded speech to promote discord 
among them. The girls, naturally enough, 
talked about each other, and said things which 
it would have been kind and wise not to repeat. 
Margaret's central position among them would 
have enabled her to reconcile their small differ- 
ences and misunderstandings, which she, on the 
contrary, did her utmost to foment, not dis- 
daining to employ misrepresentation in her mis- 
chievous mediation. Before long the spirit of 
discord reigned throughout the school, in which, 
the prime mover of the trouble tells us, "scarcely 
a peaceful affection or sincere intimacy re- 
mained." She had instinctively followed the 
ancient precept, " Divide et impera," and ruled 
for evil those who would have followed her for 
good. 



14 MARGARET FULLER. 

This state of things probably became unbear- 
able. Its cause was inquired into, and soon 
found. A tribunal was held, and before the 
whole school assembled, Margaret was accused 
of calumny and falsehood, and, alas ! convicted 
of the same. 

"At first she defended herself with self-posses- 
sion and eloquence. But when she found that 
she could no more resist the truth, she suddenly 
threw herself down, dashing her head with all 
her force against the iron hearth, on which a 
fire was burning, and was taken up senseless." 

All present were of course greatly alarmed 
at this crisis, which was followed, on the part 
of Margaret, by days of hopeless and apathetic 
melancholy. During these she would neither 
speak nor eat, but remained in a sort of stupor, 
— the result of conflicting emotions. In the 
pain which she now felt, her former resentment 
against her schoolmates disappeared. She saw 
only her own offence, and saw it without hope 
of being able to pass beyond it. 

In this emergency, when neither the sorrow 
of her young companions nor the entreaties of 
her teachers seemed to touch her, a single friend 
was able to reach the seat of Margaret's dis- 
temper, and to turn the currents of her life once 
more into a healthful channel. 

This lady, a teacher in the school, had always 



SCHOOL DAYS. 1 5 

felt a special interest in Margaret, whose char- 
acter somewhat puzzled her. With the tact of 
true affection, she drew the young girl from the 
contemplation of her own failure, by narrating 
to her the circumstances which, through no fault 
of hers, had made her own life one of sorrow 
and of sacrifice. 

Margaret herself, with a discernment beyond 
her years, had felt the high tone of this lady's 
character, and the ''proud sensibility" expressed 
in her changing countenance. From her she 
could learn the lesson of hope and of comfort. 
Listening to the story, she no longer repulsed 
the hand of healing, but took patiently the 
soothing medicine offered by her visitor. 

This story of Margaret's school life she her- 
self has told, in an episode called " Marianna," 
which was published in her " Summer on the 
Lakes," and afterwards embodied in Mr. Clarke's 
contribution to the memoir already published. 
We have already quoted several passages from 
it, and will here give her account of the end of 
the whole matter. 

" She returned to life, but it was as one who 
has passed through the valley of death. The 
heart of stone was quite broken in her; the 
fiery will fallen from flame to coal. 

" When her strength was a little restored, she 
had all her companions summoned, and said to 



l6 MARGARET FULLER. 

them : ' I deserved to die, but a generous trust 
has called me back to life. I will be worthy 
of the past, nor ever betray the trust, or re- 
sent injury more. Can you forgive the past?' 
And," says the narrative, " they not only for- 
gave, but with love and earnest tears clasped 
in their arms the returning sister. They vied 
with one another in offices of humble love to the 
humbled one; and let it be recorded, as an in- 
stance of the pure honor of which young hearts 
are capable, that these facts, known to some 
forty persons, never, so far as I know, transpired 
beyond those walls." 

In making this story public, we may believe 
Margaret to have been actuated by a feeling of 
the value of such an experience both in the study 
of character and in the discipline of young minds. 
Here was a girl, really a child in age, but al- 
ready almost a woman in selfhood and imagina- 
tion. Untrained in intercourse with her peers in 
age, she felt and exaggerated her own superiority 
to those with whom her school life first brought 
her in contact. This superiority she felt im- 
pelled to assert and maintain. So long as she 
could queen it over the other pupils she was con- 
tent. The first serious wounding of her self-love 
aroused in her a vengeful malignity, which grew 
with its own exercise. Unable as she found her- 
self to command her little public b}^ offices which 



SCHOOL DAYS. 1 7 

had seemed to her acts of condescension, she de- 
termined to rule through the evil principle of dis- 
cord. In a fortunate moment she was arrested 
in this course by an exposure whose consequences 
showed her the reflection of her own misconduct 
in the minds of those around her. Extreme in 
all things, her self-reproach took the form of 
helpless despair, which yet, at the touch of true 
affection, gave way before the courageous deter- 
mination to retrieve past error by future good 
desert. 

The excellence of Margaret's judgment and 
the generosity of her heart appear in the effect 
which this fortunate failure had upon her ma- 
turer life. The pride of her selfhood had been 
overthrown. She had learned that she could 
need the indulgence and forgiveness of others, 
and had also learned that her mates, lightly es- 
teemed by her up to that time, were capable of 
magnanimous forgiveness and generous reha- 
bilitation. In the tender strength of her young 
mind, those impressions were so received that 
they were never thereafter effaced. The esteem 
of Margaret for her own sex, then rare in wo- 
men of her order, and the great charity with 
which she ever regarded the offences of others, 
perhaps referred back through life to this time of 
trial, whose shortcoming was to be redeemed by 
such brilliant achievements. 



1 8 MARGARET FULLER. 

Margaret's school days ended soon after this 
time, and she returned to her father's house, 
much instructed in the conditions of harmonious 
relations with her fellows. 



CHAPTER II. 

LIFE IN CAMBRIDGE. FRIENDSHIP OF DR. 

HEDGE AND JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 

Dr. Hedge, a life-long friend of Margaret, has 
given a very interesting sketch of her in her 
girlhood. He first met her when he was a 
student at Harvard, and she a maiden of thir- 
teen, in her father's house at Cambridge. Her 
precocity, mental and physical, was such that 
she passed for a much older person, and had 
already a recognized place in society. She was 
at this time in blooming and vigorous health, 
with a tendency to over-stoutness, which, the 
Doctor thinks, gave her some trouble. She was 
not handsome nor even pretty, but her animated 
countenance at once made its own impression, 
and awakened in those who saw her a desire to 
know more of her. Fine hair and teeth, viva- 
cious eyes, and a peculiarly graceful carriage of 
the head and neck were points which redeemed 
her from the charge of plainness. This face of 
hers was, indeed, somewhat problematic in its 
expression, which 'carried with it the assurance 
of great possibilities, but not the certainty of 



20 MARGARET FULLER. 

their fulfilment. Her conversation was already 
brilliant and full of interest, with a satirical turn 
which became somewhat modified in after life. 
Dr. Hedge fixes her stay in the Groton school 
at the years 1824, 1825, and mentions her indul- 
gence in sarcasm as a source of trouble to her 
in a school earlier attended, that of Dr. Park, of 
Boston. 

In the year 1826 his slight acquaintance with 
her grew into a friendship which, as we have 
said, ended only with her life. During the seven 
years that followed he had abundant occasion to 
note her steady growth and the intensity of her 
inner life. This was with her, as with most 
young persons, ''a period of romance and of 
dreams, of yearning and of passion." He thinks 
that she did not at this time pursue any system- 
atic study. " She read with the heart, and was 
learning more from social experience than from 
books." One leading trait of her life was already 
prominent. This was a passionate love of all 
beauties, both in nature and in art. 

If not corresponding to a scholar's idea of sys- 
tematic study, Margaret's pursuit of culture in 
those years must have been arduous and many- 
sided. This we may partly gather from the 
books named and the themes touched upon in 
her correspondence with th^ beloved teacher 
who had brought her such near and tender help 



LIFE IN CAMBRIDGE. 21 

in her hour of need. To this lady, in a letter 
dated July ii, 1825, Margaret rehearses the rou- 
tine of her daily life : — 

" I rise a little before five, walk an hour, and 
then practise on the piano till seven, when we 
breakfast. Next I read French, Sismondi's 
' Literature of the South of Europe,' till eight, 
then two or three lectures in Brown's Philoso- 
phy. About half-past nine I go to Mr. Perkins's 
school and study Greek till twelve, when, the 
school being dismissed, I recite, go home, and 
practise again till dinner, at two. Sometimes, 
if the conversation is very agreeable, I lounge 
for half an hour over the dessert, though rarely 
so lavish of time. Then, when I can, I read two 
hours in Italian, but I am often interrupted. At 
six I walk or take a drive. Before going to bed 
I play or sing for half an hour, and about eleven 
retire to write a Kttle while in my journal, — ex- 
ercises on what I have read, or a series of char- 
acteristics which I am filling up according to 
advice." 

A year later she mentions studying " Ma- 
dame de Stael, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and 
Castilian ballads, with great delight." She asks 
her correspondent whether she would rather 
be the brilliant De Stael or the useful Edge- 
worth. In 1827 we find her occupied with a criti- 
cal study of the elder Itahan poets. She now 



22 MARGARET FULLER. 

mentions Miss Francis (Lydia Maria Child) as her 
intended companion in a course of metaphysical 
study. She characterizes this lady as " a natu- 
ral person, a most rare thing in this age of cant 
and pretension. Her conversation is charming ; 
she brings all her powers to bear upon it. Her 
style is varied, and she has a very pleasant and 
spirited way of thinking." 

Margaret's published correspondence with her 
dear teacher ends in 1830, with these words : — 

" My beloved supporter in those sorrowful 
hours, can I ever forget that to your treatment 
in that crisis of youth I owe the true life, the 
love of Truth and Honor .'* " 

From these years of pedagogy and of patience 
we must now pass to the time when this bud, 
so full of promise, unfolded into a flower rare 
and wondrous. 

The story of Margaret's early studies, and the 
wide reach of her craving for knowledge, already 
mark her as a creature of uncommon gifts. A 
devourer of books she had been from the start ; 
but books alone could not content this ardent 
mind, at once so critical and so creative. She 
must also have life at first-hand, and feed her 
intelligence from its deepest source. Hence the 
long story of her friendships, so many and vari- 
ous, yet so earnest and efficient. 

What the chosen associates of this wonderful 



FRIENDSHIPS. 23 

woman have made public concerning the inter- 
est of her conversation and the vakie of her 
influence tasks to the utmost the beUeving 
powers of a time in which the demon of self- 
interest seems to unfold himself out of most of 
the metamorphic flowers of society. Margaret 
and her friends might truly have said, " Our 
kingdom is not of this world," — at least, accord- 
ing to what this world calls kingly. But what 
imperial power had this self-poised soul, which 
could so widely open its doors and so closely 
shut them, which could lead in its train the 
brightest and purest intelligences, and " bind the 
sweet influences " of starry souls in the garland 
of its happy hours ! And here we may say, 
her kingdom was not all of this world ; for the 
kingdom of noble thought and affection is in this 
world and beyond it, and the real and ideal are 
at peace within its bounds. 

In the divided task of Margaret's biography 
it was given to James Freeman Clarke to speak 
of that early summer of her life in which these 
tender and intimate relations had their first and 
most fervent unfolding. The Harvard student 
of that day was probably a personage very unlike 
the present revered pastor of the Church of the 
Disciples. Yet we must believe that the one 
was graciously foreshadowed in the other, and 



24 MARGARET FULLER. 

that Margaret found in him the germ of what 
the later world has learned so greatly to respect 
and admire. 

The acquaintance between these two began 
in 1829, and was furthered by a family connec- 
tion which Margaret, in one of her early letters, 
playfully characterized as a cousinship in the 
thirty-seventh degree. 

During the four years immediately following, 
the two young people either met or corresponded 
daily. In explaining the origin of this friend- 
ship, Mr. Clarke modestly says : — 

" She needed a friend to whom to speak of 
her studies, to whom to express the ideas which 
were dawning and taking shape in her mind. 
She accepted me for this friend ; and to me it 
was a gift of the gods, an influence Uke no 
other." 

This intercourse was at first on both sides an 
entertainment sought and found. In its early 
stages Margaret characterizes her correspondent 
as "a socialist by vocation, a sentimentalist by 
nature, and a Channing-ite from force of circum- 
stance and of fashion." Further acquaintance 
opened beneath the superficial interest the 
deeper sources of sympathy, and a valued letter 
from Margaret is named by Mr. Clarke as 
having laid the foundation of a friendship to 
which he owed both intellectual enlightenment 



FRIENDSHIPS, 25 

and spiritual enlargement. More than for these 
he thanks Margaret for having imparted to him 
an impulse which carried him bravely forward 
in what has proved to be the normal direction 
of his life. Although destined, after those early 
years of intimate communion, to live far apart 
and in widely different spheres of labor and of 
interest, the regard of the two friends never 
suffered change or diminution. 

And here we come upon a governing feature 
in Margaret's intercourse with her friends. She 
had the power of leading those who interested 
her to a confidence which unfolded to her the 
deepest secrets of their life. Now came in play 
that unexplained action of one mind upon an- 
other which we call personal magnetism, and 
which is more distinctly recognized to-day than 
in other times as an element in social efficiency. 
It is this power which, united with intellectual 
force, gives leadership to individual men, and 
enables the great orator to hold a mighty audi- 
ence in the hollow of his hand. 

With Margaret at the period we speak of the 
exercise of this power was intensive rather than 
extensive. The circumstances of the time had 
something to do with this. Here was a soul 
whose objects and desires boldly transcended 
the sphere of ordinary life. It could neither 
wholly contain nor fitly utter itself. Pulpit and 



26 MARGARET FULLER. 

platform were then interdicted to her sex. The 
mimic stage, had she thought of it, would have 
mocked her with its unreality. On single souls, 
one at a time, she laid her detaining grasp, and 
asked what they could receive and give. Some- 
thing noble she must perceive in them before she 
would condescend to this parley. She did not 
insist that her friends should possess genius ; 
but she could only make friends of those who, 
like herself, were seekers after the higher life. 
Worthiness of object commended even medioc- 
rity to her ; but shallow worldHness awakened 
her contempt. 

In the exercise of this discrimination she no 
doubt sometimes gave offence. Mr. Clarke 
acknowledges that she not only seemed, but 
was, haughty and supercilious to the multitude, 
while to the chosen few she was the very em- 
bodiment of tender and true regard. 

It must also be acknowledged that this same 
magnetism which attracted some persons so 
strongly was to others as strongly repellent. 
Where she was least known this repulsion was 
most felt. It yielded to admiration and esteem 
where acquaintance went beyond the mere rec- 
ognition of Margaret's air and manner, which 
made a stranger a little uncertain whether he 
would be amicably entertained or subjected to 
a rediictio ad absiirdiim. As in any community 



FRIENDSHIPS. 2/ 

impressions of personality are more likely to be 
superficial than thorough, it is probable that a 
very general misunderstanding which, at a later 
day, grew up between Margaret and the great 
world of a small New England city had its ori- 
gin in a misconstruction of her manner when 
among strangers, or on the occasion of a first 
introduction. To recall this shallow popular 
judgment of her is not pleasant, but some men- 
tion of it does belong to any summary of her 
life. With such friends as she had, she had no 
reason to look upon herself as one who was 
neither understood nor appreciated. Yet her 
heart, which instinctively sought the empire 
of universal love, may have been grieved at the 
indifference and dislike which she sometimes en- 
countered. Those who know how, in some cir- 
cles, her name became a watchword for all that 
was eccentric and pretentious in the woman- 
hood of her day, will smile or sigh at the con- 
trast between the portraitures of Margaret given 
in the volumes of the memoir and the caricature 
of her which was current in the mind of the 
public at large. 

These remarks anticipate the pains and dis- 
tinctions of a later period. For the present 
let us confine our attention to the happy days 
at Cambridge, which Margaret may not have 
recognized as such, but which must have seemed 



28 MARGARET FULLER. 

bright to her when contrasted with the years 
of labor and anxiety which followed them. 

Mr. Clarke tells us that Margaret and he be- 
gan the study of the German language in 1832, 
moved thereunto by Thomas Carlyle's brilliant 
exposition of the merits of leading German au- 
thors. In three months' time Margaret had 
acquired easy command of the language, and 
within the year had read the most important 
works of Goethe and Schiller, with the writings 
also of Tieck, Korner, Richter, and Novalis. 
Extracts from her letters at this time show that 
this extensive reading was neither hasty nor 
superficial. 

She finds herself happier in the companion- 
ship of Schiller than in that of Goethe, of whom 
she says, " That perfect wisdom and merciless 
reason seem cold after those seducing pictures 
of forms more beautiful than truth." The 
" Elective Affinities " suggests to her various 
critical questions, but does not carry her away 
with the sweep of its interest. From "the 
immense superiority of Goethe" she finds it 
a relief to turn to the simplicity of Novalis, " a 
wondrous youth, who has written only one vol- 
ume," and whose *' one-sidedness, imperfection, 
and glow seem refreshingly human" to her. 
Korner becomes a fixed star in the heaven of 
her thought. Lessing interests her less. She 



PERIOD OF ROMANCE. 29 

credits him with the production of " well con- 
ceived and sustained characters and interesting 
situations," but not with any profound knowledge 
of human nature. " I think him easily followed ; 
strong, but not deep." 

This was with Margaret, as Dr. Hedge has 
well observed, the period of romance. Her 
superiority to common individuals appeared in 
the fact that she was able to combine with 
intense personal aspirations and desires a wide 
outlook into the destinies of the human race. 

We find her, in these very days, "engaged 
in surveying the level on which the public mind 
is poised." She turns from the poetic tragedy 
and comedy of life to study, as she says, " the 
rules of its prose," and to learn from the talk 
of common people what elements and modes of 
thought go to make up the average American 
mind. She listens to George Thompson, the 
English anti-slavery orator, and is led to say that, 
if she had been a man, she should have coveted 
the gift of eloquence above all others, and this 
for the intensity of its effects. She thinks of 
writing six historical tragedies, and devises the 
plan for three of them. Tales of Hebrew his- 
tory it is also in her mind to compose. Becom- 
ing convinced that " some fixed opinion on the 
subject of metaphysics is an essential aid to 
systematic culture," she addresses herself to the 



30 MARGARET FULLER. 

Study of Fichte and Jacobi, of Brown and Stew- 
art. The first of these appeared to her incom- 
prehensible. Of the second, she conjectures 
that his views are derived from some author 
whom she has not read. She thinks in good 
earnest of writing a hfe of Goethe, and wishes 
to visit Europe in order to collect the material 
requisite for this. Her appreciation of Dr. 
Channing is shown in a warm encomium on 
his work treating of slavery, of which she says, 
" It comes like a breath borne over some solemn 
^sea which separates us from an island of right- 
eousness." N^ 

..In summing up his account of this part of 
Margaret's life, Mr. Clarke characterizes self- 
culture as the object in which she was content 
to lose sight of all others. Her devotion to this 
great end was, he says, "wholly religious, and 
almost Christian." She was religious in her 
recognition of the divine element in human ex- 
perience, and Christian in her elevation above 
the sordid interests of life, and in her devotion 
to the highest standards of duty and of destiny. 
He admits, however, that her aim, noble as it 
was, long remained too intensely personal to 
reach the absolute generosity required by the 
Christian rule. This defect made itself felt out- 
wardly by a certain disesteem of " the vulgar 
herd," and in an exaggerated worship of great 



SELF-CULTURE. 31 

personalities. Its inner effects were more 
serious. To her darling desire for growth and 
development she sacrificed "everything but 
manifest duty." The want of harmony between 
her outward circumstances and her inward long- 
ings so detained her thoughts that she was 
unable to pass beyond the confines of the pres- 
ent moment, and could not foresee that true 
growth must bring her, as it soon did, a great 
enlargement of influence and relation. 



CHAPTER III. 

RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. — MARGARET's EARLY CRITICS. 
FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. EMERSON. " 

It was to be expected that in such a corre- 
spondence as that between Margaret and James 
Freeman Clarke the chord of rehgious belief 
would not remain untouched. From Marcra- 
ret's own words, in letters and in her journal, 
we clearly gather that her mind, in this respect, 
passed through a long and wide experience. 
Fortunate for her was, in that day, the Unita- 
rian pulpit, with its larger charity and freer exe- 
gesis. With this fold for her spiritual home, 
she could go in and out, finding pasture, while 
by the so-called Orthodox sects she would have 
been looked upon as standing without the bounds 
of all religious fellowship. 

The requirements of her nature were twofold. 
A religious foinidation for thought was to her 
a necessity. Equally necessary was to her the 
untrammelled exercise of critical judgment, and 
the thinking her own thoughts, instead of accept- 
ing those of other people. We may feel sure 
that Margaret, even to save her own soul, would 



RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 33 

not and could not have followed any confession 
of faith in opposition to her own best judgment. 
She would have preferred the hell of the free 
soul to the heaven of the slave. To combine 
this intellectual interpretation of religious duty 
with the simple devotion which the heart craves 
is not easy for any one. We may be very glad 
to find that for her it was not impossible. Her 
attitude between these two points of opposition 
is indeed edifying ; for, while she follows thought 
with the daring of a sceptic, and fearlessly rea- 
sons concerning the highest mysteries, she yet 
acknowledges the insufficiency of human knowl- 
edge for themes so wonderful, and here, as 
nowhere else, bows her imperial head and con- 
fesses herself human. 

One thing we may learn from what Margaret 
has written on this subject, if we do not already 
know it, and this is, that in any true religious 
experience there must be progress and change 
of attitude. This progress may be first initiated 
by the preponderance of thought or by that of 
affection, but, as it goes on, the partiality of 
first views will be corrected by considerations 
which are developed by later study. Religious 
sincerity is, in the end, justified in all its stages ; 
but these stages, separately considered, will ap- 
pear more or less incomplete and sometimes even 
irreligious. 

3 



34 MARGARET FULLER. 

When first interrogated by her correspondent, 
she says : " I have determined not to form set- 
tled opinions at present. Loving or feeblena- 
tures need a positive religion, a visible refuge, 
a protection, as much in the passionate season 
of youth as in those stages nearer to the grave. 
But mine is not such. My pride is superior to 
any feelings I have yet experienced ; my affec- 
tion is strong admiration, not the necessity of 
giving or receiving assistance or sympathy." So 
much for the subjective side of the matter with 
Margaret at this time. The objective is formu- 
lated by her in this brief creed : " I believe in 
Eternal Progression. I believe in a God, a 
Beauty and Perfection to which I am to strive 
all my life for assimilation. From these two 
articles of belief I draw the rules by which I 
strive to regulate my life. Tangible promises, 
well-defined hopes, are things of which I do 
not now feel the need. At present my soul is 
intent on this life, and I think of religion as 
its rule." 

Those last words are not in contrast with the 
general tone of religious teaching to-day, but 
when Margaret wrote them to James Freeman 
Clarke, an exaggerated adjournment of human 
happiness to the glories of another world was 
quite commonly considered as essential to a 
truly Christian standpoint. 



RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 35 

Even at this self-sufficing period of her life 
Margaret's journals were full of prayer and as- 
piration. Here are some of the utterances of 
this soul, which she herself calls a proud one : 
" Blessed Father, nip every foolish wish in blos- 
som. Lead me any way to truth and goodness, 
but if it might be, I would not pass from idol 
to idol. Let no mean sculpture deform a mind 
disorderly, perhaps ill-furnished, but spacious and 
life-warm." 

After hearing a sermon on the nature of 
duties, social and personal, she says : " My 
heaVt swelled with prayer. I began to feel hope 
that time and toil might strengthen me to de- 
spise the 'vulgar parts of felicity,' and live as 
becomes an immortal creature. Oh, lead me, 
my Father ! root out false pride and selfishness 
from my heart ; inspire me with virtuous energy, 
and enable me to improve every talent for the 
eternal good of myself and others." 

Seasons of bitter discouragement alternated 
at this time with the moments in which she felt, 
not only her own power, but also the excellence 
of her aims in life. 

Of one of these dark hours Margaret's jour- 
nal gives a vivid description, from which some 
passages may be quoted. The occasion was a 
New England Thanksgiving, a day on which her 
attendance at church was almost compulsory. 



'36 MARGARET FULLER. 

This church was not to her a spiritual home, 
and on the day now spoken of the song of 
thanksgiving made positive discord in her ears. 
She felt herself in no condition to give thanks. 
Her feet were entangled in the problem of life. 
Her soul was agonized by its unreconciled con- 
tradictions. 

" I was wearied out with mental conflicts. I 
felt within myself great power and generosity 
and tenderness ; but it seemed to me as if they 
were all unrecognized, and as if it was impossi- 
ble that they should be used in life. I was only 
one-and-twenty ; the past was worthless, the 
future hopeless ; yet I could not remember ever 
voluntarily to have done a wrong thing, and my 
aspiration seemed very high." 

Looking about in the church, she envied the 
little children for their sense of dependence and 
protection. She knew not, she says, " that none 
could have any father but God," knew not that 
she was "not the only lonely one, the selected 
CEdipus, the special victim of an iron law." 

From this intense and exaggerated self- 
consciousness, the only escape was in fleeing 
from self. She sought to do this, as she had 
often done, by a long quick walk, whose fatigue 
should weary out her anguish, and enable her 
to return home " in a state of prayer." On this 
day this resource did not avail her. 



RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 3/ 

''All seemed to have reached its height. It 
seemed as if I. could never return to a world in 
which I had no place, to the mockery of human- 
ities. I could not act a part, nor seem to live 
any longer." 

The aspect of the outer vi^orld was in corre- 
spondence with these depressing thoughts. 

" It was a sad and sallow day of the late 
autumn. Slow processions of clouds were pass- 
ing over a cold blue sky ; the hues of earth were 
dull and gray and brown, with sickly struggles 
of late green here and there. Sometimes a 
moaning gust of wind drove late, reluctant leaves 
across the path — there was no life else." Driven 
from place to place by the conflict within her, 
she sat down at last to rest " where the trees 
were thick about a little pool, dark and silent. 
All was dark, and cold, and still." Suddenly 
the sun broke through the clouds " with that 
transparent sweetness, like the last smile of a 
dying lover, which it will use when it has been 
unkind all a cold autumn day." And with this 
unlooked-for brightness passed into her soul *'a 
beam from its true sun," whose radiance, she says, 
never departed more. This sudden illumination 
was not, however, an unreasoning, unaccounta- 
ble one. In that moment flashed upon her the 
solution of the problem of self, whose perplexi- 
ties had followed her from her childish days. 



38 MARGARET FULLER. 

She comprehended at once the struggle in which 
she had been well-nigh overcome, and the illu- 
sion which had till then made victory impossible. 
*' I saw how long it must be before the soul can 
learn to act under these limitations of time and 
space and human nature ; but I saw also that it 
must do it. I saw there was no self, that selfish- 
ness was all folly, and the result of circumstance ; 
that it was only because I thought self real that 
I suffered ; that I had only to live in the idea of 
the all, and all was mine. This truth came to 
me, and I received it unhesitatingly ; so that 
I was for that hour taken up into God. . . . 
My earthly pain at not being recognized never 
went deep after this hour. I had passed the 
extreme of passionate sorrow, and all check, all 
failure, all ignorance, have seemed temporary 
ever since." 

The progress of this work already brings us 
to that portion of Margaret's life in which her 
character was most likely to be judged of by the 
world around her as already determined in its 
features and aspect. That this judgment was 
often a misjudgment is known to all who re- 
member Margaret's position in Boston society 
in the days of her lessons and conversations. A 
really vulgar injustice was often done her by 
those who knew of her only her appearance 
and supposed pretensions. Those to whom she 



i 



EARLY CRITICS. 39 

never was a living presence may naturally ask 
of those who profess to have known her, whether 
this injustice did not originate with herself, 
whether she did not do herself injustice by ha- 
bitually presenting herself in an attitude which 
was calculated to heighten the idea, already con- 
ceived, of her arrogance and overweening self- 
esteem. 

Independently of other sources of information, 
the statements of one so catholic and charitable 
as Mr. Emerson meet us here, and oblige us to 
believe that the great services which Margaret 
was able to render to those with whom she came 
into relation were somewhat impaired by a self- 
esteem which it would have been unfortunate 
for her disciples to imitate. The satirists of the 
time saw this, and Margaret, besides encounter- 
ing the small-shot of society ridicule, received 
now and then such a broadside as James Russell 
Lowell gave her in his " Fable for Critics." Of 
this long and somewhat bitter tirade a few lines 
may suffice as a specimen : — 

" But here comes Miranda. Zeus ! where shall I flee to ? 
She has such 2i penchant for bothering me, too ! 
She always keeps asking if I don't observe a 
Particular likeness 'twixt her and Minerva. 

She will take an old notion and make it her own. 
By saying it o'er in her sibylline tone ; 



40 MARGARET FULLER. 

Or persuade you 't is something tremendously deep, 
By repeating it so as to put you to sleep ; 
And she well may defy any mortal to see through it, 
When once she has mixed up her infinite me through it. 

Here Miranda came up and said : Phoebus, you know 
That the infinite soul has its infinite woe, 
As I ought to know, having lived cheek by jowl. 
Since the day I was born, with the infinite soul." 

These remarks, explanatory and apologetic, 
are suggested partly by Mr. Emerson's state- 
ments concerning the beginning of his acquaint- 
ance with Margaret, and partly by the writer's 
own recollections of the views of outsiders con- 
cerning her, which contrasted strongly with the 
feeling and opinion of her intimates. 

Mr. Emerson first heard of Margaret from 
Dr. Hedge, and afterwards from Miss Marti- 
neau. Both were warm in their praise of her, 
and the last-named was especially desirous to 
introduce her to Mr. Emerson, whom she very 
much wished to know. After one or more chance 
meetings, it was arranged that ]\Iargaret should 
spend a fortnight with Mrs. Emerson. The 
date of this visit was in July, 1836. 

To the description of her person already quoted 
from Dr. Hedge, we may add a sentence or two 
from Mr. Emerson's record of his first impres- 
sions of her: — 

" She had a face and frame that would indi- 



ACQUAINTANCE WITH EMERSON. 41 

cate fulness and tenacity of life. . . . She was 
then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, 
and of lady-like self-possession. For the rest, 
her appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her 
extreme plainness, a trick of incessantly opening 
and shutting her eyelids, the nasal tone of her 
voice, all repelled ; and I said to myself, we shall 
never get far." 

But Margaret greatly esteemed Mr. Emerson, 
and was intent upon establishing a friendly rela- 
tion with him. Her reputation for satire was 
well known to him, and was rather justified in 
his eyes by the first half-hour of her conversa- 
tion with him. 

" I believe I fancied her too much interested 
in personal history ; and her talk was a comedy 
in which dramatic justice was done to every- 
body's foibles, i remember that she made me 
laugh more than I liked." 

Passing into a happier vein, she unfolded her 
brilliant powers of repartee, expressed her own 
opinions, and sought to discover those of her 
companion. Soon her wit had effaced the im- 
pression of her personal unattractiveness ; "and 
the eyes, which were so plain at first, swam with 
fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy and 
superabundant life." He now saw that *' her 
satire was only the pastime and necessity of 
her talent," and as he learned to know her 



42 MARGARET FULLER. 

better, her plane of character rose constantly 
in his estimation, disclosing " many moods and 
powers, in successive platforms or terraces, each 
above each." 

Mr. Emerson likens Margaret's relations with 
her friends to the wearing of a necklace of social 
brilliants of the first water. A dreaded waif 
among the merely fashionable, her relations with 
men and women of higher tastes were such that, 
as Mr. Emerson says, " All the art, the thought, 
and the nobleness in New England seemed at 
that moment related to her, and she to it." 

In the houses of such friends she was always 
a desired guest, and in her various visitings she 
"seemed like the queen of some parliament of 
love, who carried the key to all confidences, and 
to whom every question had been referred." 

Mr. Emerson gives some portraits which make 
evident the variety as well as the extent of Mar- 
garet's attraction. Women noted for beauty and 
for social talent, votaries of song, students of art 
and literature, — men as well as women, — vied 
with each other in their devotion to her. To 
each she assumed and sustained a special rela- 
tion whose duties and offices she never neglected 
nor confounded. To each she became at once a 
source of inspiration and a court of appeal. The 
beneficence of her influence may be inferred from 
the lasting gratitude of her friends, who always 



POWER OVER OTHERS. 43 

remembered her as having wisely guided and 
counselled them. 

Any human life is liable to be modified by the 
supposition that its results are of great interest 
to some one whose concern in them is not a 
selfish one. Where this supposition is verified 
by corresponding acts, the power of the indi- 
vidual is greatly multiplied. This merciful, this 
providential interest Margaret felt for each of 
her many friends. There was no illusion in the 
sense of her value which they, all and severally, 
entertained. 

Where, we may ask, shall we look to-day for 
a friendliness so wide and so availing ? We can 
only answer that such souls are not sent into 
the world every day. Few of us can count 
upon inspiring even in those who are nearest 
and dearest to us this untiring concern in our 
highest welfare. But such a friend to so many 
it would be hard to find. 

When we consider Margaret's love of litera- 
ture, and her power of making its treasures her 
own, we must think of this passion of hers for 
availing intercourse with other minds as indeed 
a providential gift which no doubt lavished in 
passing speech much that would have been elo- 
quent on paper, but which evidently had on 
society the immediate and intensified effect 
which distinguishes the living word above the 
dead letter. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ART STUDIES. — REMOVAL TO GROTON. — MEETING 

WITH HARRIET MARTINEAU. DEATH OF MR. 

FULLER. DEVOTION TO HER FAMILY. 

Margaret's enthusiasm for art was in some 
measure the result of her study of Goethe. Yet 
she had in herself a love of the beautiful, and a 
sense of its office in life, which would naturally 
have led her far in the direction in which this 
great master gave her so strong an impulsion. 
In her multifarious reading she gave much time 
to the literature of art, and in those days had 
read everything that related to Michael Angelo 
and Raphael, Quatremere de Quincy, Condivi, 
Vasari, Benvenuto CelHni, and others. The 
masters themselves she studied in the casts of 
the Boston Athenaeum, in the Brimmer Collec- 
tion of Engravings, and in the contents of 
certain portfolios which a much-esteemed friend 
placed at her service, and which contained all 
the designs of Michael and Raphael. 

The delight which Margaret felt in these 
studies demanded the sympathy of her elect 
associates, and Mr. Emerson remembers cer- 



ART STUDIES. 45 

tain months as having been " colored with the 
genius of these Itahans." In 1839 Mr. Allston's 
numerous works were collected for a public 
exhibition which drew to Boston lovers of art 
from many distant places. In the same year 
some sculptures of Greenough and Crawford 
were added to the attractions of the Boston 
Athenaeum. 

In Margaret's appreciation of these works, if 
we may believe Mr. Emerson, a certain fanciful 
interpretation of her own sometimes took the 
place of a just estimate of artistic values. Yet 
he found her opinion worthy of attention, as 
evincing her real love of beautiful things, and 
her great desire to understand the high signifi- 
cance of art. He makes some quotations from 
her notes on the Athenaeum Gallery of sculpture 
in 1840. 

Here she finds marble busts of Byron and Na- 
poleon. The first, with all its beauty, appears to 
her ** sultry, stern, all-craving, all-commanding," 
and expressive of something which accounts for 
what she calls " the grand failure of his scheme 
of existence." The head of Napoleon is, she 
says, not only stern but ruthless. " Yet this 
ruthlessness excites no aversion. The artist 
has caught its true character, and given us here 
the Attila, the instrument of fate to serve a 
purpose not his own." She groups the poet and 



46 MARGARET FULLER. 

the warrior together as having, " the one in let- 
ters, the other in arms, represented more fully 
than any other the tendency of their time ; 
[they] more than any other gave it a chance 
for reaction." Near these she finds a head of 
the poet Ennius, and busts also of Edward 
Everett, Washington Allston, and Daniel Web- 
ster. Her comment upon this juxtaposition is 
interesting. 

" Yet even near the Ennius and Napoleon 
our American men look worthy to be perpet- 
uated in marble or bronze, if it were only for 
their air of calm, unpretending sagacity." 

Mr. Henry James, Jr., writing of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, speaks of the Massachusetts of 
forty or more years ago as poor in its aesthetic 
resources. Works of art indeed were then few 
in number, and decorative industry, in its pres- 
ent extent, was not dreamed of. But in the 
intellectual form of appreciative criticism the 
Boston of that day was richer than the city of 
our own time. The first stage of culture is 
cultivation, and the art lovers of that day had 
sowed the seed of careful study, and were intent 
upon its growth and ripening. If possession is 
nine points of the law, as it is acknowledged 
to be, the knowledge of values may be said to 
be nine points of possession, and Margaret and 
her friends, with their knowledge of the import 



BELIEF IN HER OWN POWER. 47 - 

of art, and with their trained and careful obser- 
vation of its outward forms, had a richer feast in 
the casts and engravings of that time than can 
be enjoyed to-day by the amateur, who, with a 
bric-a-brac taste and blase feehng, haunts the 
picture-shops of our large cities, or treads the 
galleries in which the majestic ghosts of earnest 
times rebuke his flippant frivolity. 

We have lingered over these records of Mar- 
garet's brilliant youth, because their prophecies 
aid us greatly in the interpretation of her later 
hfe. The inspired maiden of these letters and 
journals is very unlike the "Miss Fuller" who 
in those very days was sometimes quoted as the 
very embodiment of all that is ungraceful and un- 
feminine. How little were the beauties of her 
mind, the graces of her character, guessed at or 
sought for by those who saw in her unlikeness 
to the popular or fashionable type of the time 
matter only for derisive comment ! 

It may not be unimportant for us here to exam- 
ine a little the rationale of Margaret's position, 
and inquire whether the trait which occasioned 
so much animadversion was not the concomi- 
tant of one of Margaret's most valuable qualities. 
This we should call a belief in her own moral 
and intellectual power, which impelled her to 
examine and decide all questions for herself, and 
which enabled her to accomplish many a brave 



48 MARGARET FULLER. 

work and sacrifice. This sense of her own 
power was answered by the common confession 
of weakness v/hich then was, and still is, a part 
of the received creed of women on the level of 
good society. Did not the prone and slavish 
attitude of these women appear to Margaret as 
fatal to character as it really is ? 

" I am only a woman," was a remark often 
heard in that day, as in this, from women to 
whom that *' only " was not to be permitted ! 
Only the guardian of the beginning of life, only 
the sharer in all its duties and inspirations ? 
Culture and Christianity recognized as much 
as this, but the doctrine still remained an ab- 
stract one, and equal rights were scarcely thought 
of as a corollary to equal duties. Margaret never 
saw, though she foresaw, the awakening and 
recognition of the new womanhood which is 
already changing the aspect of civilized society. 
An eccentric in her own despite, she had dared 
assume her full height, and to demand her 
proper place. Her position was as exceptional 
as was her genius. From the isolation of her 
superiority, was it wonderful that she should 
consider it more absolute than it really was .? 

This exaggerated sense of power is perhaps 
nothing more than the intensification of con- 
sciousness which certain exigencies will awaken 
in those who meet them with a special work to 



REMOVAL TO GROT ON. 49 

do and a special gift to do it with. It must be 
remembered that Margaret's self-esteem did not 
really involve any disesteem of others. She 
honored in all their best traits, and her only 
ground of quarrel with humanity at large was 
its derogation from its own dignity, its neglect 
of its own best interests. Such a sense of hu- 
man value as she possessed was truly a Christian 
gift, and it was in virtue of this that she was 
able to impart such exhilaration and hopefulness 
to those who were content to learn of her. 

But here, in our chronicle, the early morning 
hours are already over. The inward conquest 
which was sealed by the sunbeam of that " sal- 
low " November day becomes the prelude to an 
outward struggle with difficulties which tasked 
to the utmost the strength acquired by our 
neophyte through prayer and study. 

In the spring of 1833 Margaret found herself 
obliged to leave the academic shades of Cam- 
bridge for the country retirement of Groton. 
Her father, wearied with a long practice of the 
law, had removed his residence to the latter 
place, intending to devote his later years to liter- 
ary labor and the education of his younger chil- 
dren. To Margaret this change was unwelcome, 
and the result showed it, at a later day, to have 
been unfortunate for the family. She did not, 
however, take here the position of a malcontent, 
4 . 



so MARGARET FULLER. 

but that of one who, finding herself removed 
from congenial surroundings, knows how to sum- 
mon to her aid the hosts of noble minds with 
which study has made her familiar. Her Ger- 
man books go with her, and Goethe, Schiller, and 
Jean Paul solace her lonely hours. She reads 
works on architecture, and books of travel in 
Italy, while sympathy with her father's pursuits 
leads her to interest herself in American history, 
concerning which he had collected much infor- 
mation with a view to historical composition. 

We find her also engaged in tuition. She has 
four pupils, probably the younger children of the 
family, and gives lessons in three languages five 
days in the week, besides teaching geography 
and history. She has much needlework to do, 
and the ill-health of her mother and grandmother 
brings additional cares. The course of study 
which she has marked out for herself can only 
be pursued, she says, on three evenings in the 
week, and at chance hours in the day. It in- 
cludes a careful perusal of Alfieri's writings and 
an examination into the evidences of the Chris- 
tian religion. To this she is impelled by "dis- 
tressing sceptical notions " of her own, and by 
the doubts awakened in her mind by the argu- 
ments of infidels and of deists, some of whom are 
numbered among her friends. 

The following letter, addressed by Margaret to 



LETTER TO A FRIEND. 5 1 

a much-admired friend, will give us some idea 

of the playful mood which relieved her days of 

serious application. 

"Groton, 1S34. 
" To Mrs. Almira B. 

"Are you not ashamed, O most friendshipless 
clergywoman ! not to have enlivened my long 
seclusion by one line "^ Does the author of the 
* lecture delivered with much applause before the 
Brooklyn Lyceum ' despise and wish to cast off 
the author of 'essays contumeliously rejected by 
that respected publication, the '* Christian Ex- 
aminer".'^' That a little success should have 
such power to steel the female heart to base 
ingratitude ! O Ally ! Ally ! wilt thou forget 
that it was I (in happier hours thou hast full oft 
averred it) who first fanned the spark of thy 
ambition into flame .'' Think'st thou that thou 
owest naught to those long sweeps over the in- 
expressive realities of literature, when thou wast 
obliged to trust to my support, thy own opinions 
as yet scarce budding from thy heels or shoul- 
ders .? Dost thou forget — but my emotions will 
not permit me to pursue the subject ; surely I 
must have jogged your conscience sufficiently. 
I shall follow the instructions of the great 
Goethe, and, having in some degree vented my 
feelings, address you as if you were what you 
ought to be. Still remains enveloped in mys- 



52 MARGARET FULLER. 

tery the reason why neither you nor my reverend 
friend came to bid me good-by before I left 
your city, according to promise. I suspected 
the waiter at the time of having intercepted 
your card ; but your long venomous silence has 
obliged me to acquit him. I had treasured up 
sundry little anecdotes touching my journey 
homeward, which, if related with dramatic skill, 
might excite a smile on your face, O laughter- 
loving blue-stocking ! I returned home under 
the protection of a Mr. Fullerton, fresh from 
London and Paris, who gave me an entirely 
new view of continental affairs. He assured 
me that the German Prince^ was an ignorant 
pretender, in the face of my assurances that 
I had read and greatly admired his writings, 
and gave me a contemptuous description of 
Waldo Emerson diiwig in boots at Timothy 
Wiggin's, absohiment a faire mourir ! All his 
sayings were exquisite. And then a siii generis 
mother whom I met with on board the steamboat. 
All my pretty pictures are blotted out by the 
rude hand of Time : verily this checking of speech 
is dangerous. If all the matter I have been pre- 
serving for various persons is in my head, packed 
away, distributed among the various organs, how 
immensely will my head be developed when I 
return to the world. This is the first time in my 

1 Puckler-Muskau. 



LETTER TO A FRIEND. 53 

life that I have known what it is to have nobody 
to speak to, cest a dire, of my own pecuUar Httle 
fancies. I bear it with strange philosophy, but 
I do wish to be written to. I will tell you how I 
pass my time without society or exercise. Even 
till two o'clock, sometimes later, I pour ideas 
into the heads of the Httle Fullers ; much runs 
out — indeed, I am often reminded of the chapter 
on home education, in the ' New Monthly.' But 
the few drops which remain mightily gladden 
the sight of my father. Then I go down-stairs 
and ask for my letters from the post ; this is my 
only pleasure, according to the ideas most peo- 
ple entertain of pleasure. Do you write me an 
excellent epistle by return of mail, or I will make 
your head ache by a minute account of the way 
in which the remaining hours are spent. I have 
only lately read the ' Female Sovereigns ' of 
your beloved Mrs. Jameson, and like them better 
than any of her works. Her opinions are clearly 
expressed, sufficiently discriminating, and her 
manner unusually simple. I was not dazzled by 
excess of artificial light, nor cloyed by spiced 
and sweetened sentiments. My love to your 
revered husband, and four kisses to Edward, two 
on your account, one for his beauty, and one 
abstract kiss, symbol of my love for all little 

children in general. Write of him, of Mr. 's 

sermons, of your likes and dislikes, of any new 



54 MARGARET FULLER. 

characters, sublime or droll, you may have un- 
earthed, and of all other things I should like. 

" Affectionately your country friend, poor and 
humble 

" Margaret." 

In the summer of. 1835 ^ great pleasure and 
refreshment came to Margaret in the acquaint- 
ance of Miss Martineau, whom she met while 
on a visit to her friend, Mrs. Farrar, in Cam- 
bridge. In speaking of this first meeting Mar- 
garet says : " I wished to give myself wholly 
up to receive an impression of her. . . . What 
shrewdness in detecting various shades of char- 
acter ! Yet what she said of Hannah More 
and Miss Edgeworth grated upon my feelings." 
In a later conversation " the barrier that sepa- 
rates acquaintance from friendship " was passed, 
and Margaret felt, beneath the sharpness of her 
companion's criticism, the presence of a truly 
human heart. 

The two ladies went to church together, and 
the minister prayed " for our friends." Margaret 
was moved by this to offer a special prayer for 
Miss Martineau, which so impressed itself upon 
her mind that she was able to write it down. 
We quote the part of it which most particularly 
refers to her new friend : — 

*' May her path be guarded and blessed. May 



HARRIET MARTINEAU. 55 

her noble mind be kept firmly poised in its na- 
tive truth, unsullied by prejudice or error, and 
strong to resist whatever outwardly or inwardly 
shall war against its high vocation. May each 
day bring to this generous seeker new riches 
of true philosophy and of Divine love. And, 
amidst all trials, give her to know and feel that 
thou, the All-sufficing, art with her, leading her 
on through eternity to likeness of thyself." 

The change of base which, years after this 
time, transformed Miss Martineau into an en- 
thusiastic disbeliever would certainly not have 
seemed to Margaret an answer to her prayer. 
But as the doctrine that "God reveals himself 
in many ways " was not new to her, and as her 
petition includes the Eternities, we may believe 
that she appreciated the sincerity of her friend's 
negations, and anticipated for her, as for herself, 
a later vision of the Celestial City, whose bright- 
ness should rise victorious above the mists of 
speculative doubt. 

A serious illness intervened at this time, 
brought on, one might think, by the intense 
action of Margaret's brain, stimulated by her 
manifold and unremitting labors. For nine 
days and nights she suffered from fever, accom- 
panied by agonizing pain in her head. Her be- 
loved mother was at her bedside day and night. 
Her father, usually so reserved in expressions 



56 MARGARET FULLER. 

of affection, was moved by the near prospect of 
her death to say to her : " My dear, I have been 
thinking of you in the night, and I cannot re- 
member that you have any faults. You have 
defects, of course, as all mortals have, but I do 
not know that you have a single fault." These 
words were intended by him as a viaticum for 
her, but they were really to be a legacy of love 
to his favorite child. 

Margaret herself anticipated death with calm- 
ness, and, in view of the struggles and disap- 
pointments of life, with willingness. But the 
threatened bolt was to fall upon a head dearer 
to her than her own. In the early autumn of 
the same year her father, after a two days' ill- 
ness, fell a victim to cholera. 

Margaret's record of the grief which this 
affliction brought her is very deep and tender. 
Her father's image was ever present to her, and 
seemed even to follow her to her room, and to 
look in upon her there. Her most poignant 
sorrow was in the thought, suggested to many 
by similar afflictions, that she might have kept 
herself nearer to him in sympathy and in duty. 
The altered circumstances of the family, indeed, 
soon aroused her to new activities. Mr. Fuller 
had left no will, and had somewhat diminished 
his property by unproductive investments. Mar- 
garet now found new reason to wish that she 



DEATH OF MR. FULLER. 57 

belonged to the sterner sex, since, had she 
been eldest son instead of eldest daughter, she 
might have become the administrator of her 
father's estate and the guardian of her sister 
and brothers. She regretted her ignorance of 
such details of business as are involved in the 
care of property, and determined to acquaint 
herself with them, reflecting that "the same 
mind which has made other attainments can in 
time compass these." In this hour of trial she 
seeks and finds relief and support in prayer. 

*' May God enable me to see the way clear, 
and not to let down the intellectual in raising 
the moral tone of my mind. Difficulties and 
duties became distinct the very night after my 
father's death, and a solemn prayer was offered 
then that I might combine what is due to others 
with what is due to myself. The spirit of that 
prayer I shall constantly endeavor to maintain." 

This death, besides the sorrow and perplexity 
which followed it, brought to Margaret a disap- 
pointment which seemed to her to bar the fulfil- 
ment of her highest hopes. She had for two 
years been contemplating a visit to Europe, with 
a view to the better prosecution of her studies. 
She had earned the right to this indulgence 
beforehand, by assisting in the education of the 
younger children of the family. An opportunity 
now offered itself of making this journey under 



58 MARGARET FULLER. 

the most auspicious circumstances. Her friends, 
Mr. and Mrs. Farrar, were about to cross the 
ocean, and had invited lier to accompany them. 
Miss Martineau was to be of the party, and Mar- 
garet now saw before her, not only this beloved 
companionship, but also the open door which 
would give her an easy access to literary society 
in England, and to the atmosphere of old-world 
culture which she so passionately longed to 
br<eathe. 

With this brilliant vision before her, and with 
her whole literary future trembling, as she 
thought, in the scale, Margaret prayed only 
that slie might make the right decision. This 
soon became clear to her, and she determined, 
in spite of the entreaties of her family, to remain 
with her careworn mother, and not to risk the 
possibility of encroaching upon the fund neces- 
sary for the education of her brothers and 
sister. 

Of all the crownings of Margaret's life, shall 
we not most envy her that of this act of sacri- 
fice } So near to the feast of the gods, she pre- 
fers the fast of duty, and recognizes the claims 
of family affection as more imperative than the 
gratification of any personal taste or ambition. 

Margaret does not seem to have been sup- 
ported in this trial by any sense of its heroism. 
Her decision was to her simply a following of 



DEVOTION TO HER FAMILY. 59 

the right, in which she must be content, as she 
says, to forget herself and act for the sake of 
others. 

We may all be glad to remember .this exam- 
ple, and to refer to it those who find themselves 
in a maze of doubt between what they owe to 
the cultivation of their own gifts, what to the 
need and advantage of those to whom they 
stand in near relation. Had Margaret at this 
time forsaken her darkened household, the dif- 
ference to its members would have been very 
great, and she herself would have added to the 
number of those doubting or mistaken souls who 
have been carried far from the scene of their 
true and appointed service by some dream of 
distinction never to be fulfilled. In the sequel 
she was not only justified, but rewarded. The 
sacrifice she had made secured the blessings of 
education to the younger members of her family. 
Her prayer that the lifting of her moral nature 
might not lower the tone of her intellect was 
answered, as it was sure to be, and she found 
near at hand a field of honor and usefulness 
which the brilliant capitals of Europe would 
not have offered her. 

Margaret's remaining days in Groton were 
passed in assiduous reading, and her letters and 
journals make suggestive comments on Goethe, 



6o MARGARET FULLER. 

Shelley, Sir James Mackintosh, Herschel, Words- 
worth, and others. Her scheme of culture was 
what we should now call encyclopedic, and em- 
braced mgst, if not all, departments of human 
knowledge. If she was at all mistaken in her 
scope, it was in this, that she did not suffi- 
ciently appreciate the inevitable limitations of 
brain power and of bodily strength. Her im- 
patience of such considerations led her to an 
habitual over-use of her brilliant faculties which 
resulted in an impaired state of health. 

In the autumn of 1836 Margaret left Groton, 
not without acknowledgment of " many precious 
lessons given there in faith, fortitude, self-com- 
mand, and unselfish love. 

*' There, too, in solitude, the mind acquired 
more power of concentration, and discerned 
the beauty of strict method ; there, too, more 
than all, the heart was awakened to sympathize 
with the ignorant, to pity the vulgar, to hope for 
the seemingly worthless, and to commune with 
the Divine Spirit of Creation." 



CHAPTER V. 

WINTER IN BOSTON. — A SEASON OF SEVERE LABOR. 

connection with greene street school, 

providence, r. i. editorship of the " dial." 

— Margaret's estimate of allston's pictures. 

Margaret's removal was to Boston, where a 
twofold labor was before her. She was engaged 
to teach Latin and French in Mr. Alcott's school, 
then at the height of its prosperity, and intended 
also to form classes of young ladies who should 
study with her French, German, and Italian. 

Mr. Alcott's educational theories did not alto- 
gether commend themselv^es to Margaret's judg- 
ment. They had in them, indeed, the germ of 
much that is to-day recognized as true and im- 
portant. But Margaret considered him to be 
too much possessed with the idea of the unity 
of knowledge, too little aware of the complexi- 
ties of instruction. 

He, on the other hand, describes her "as a per- 
son clearly given to the boldest speculation, and 
of liberal and varied acquirements. Not want- 
ing in imaginative power, she has the rarest 
good sense and discretion. The blending of 



62 MARGARET FULLER, 

sentiment and of wisdom in her is most re- 
markable, and her taste is as fine as her pru- 
dence. I think her the most brilHant talker of 
her day." 

Margaret now passed through twenty-five 
weeks of incessant labor, suffering the while 
from her head, which she calls " a bad head," 
but which we should consider a most abused 
one. Her retrospect of this period of toil is 
interesting, and with its severity she remem- 
bers also its value to her. Meeting with many 
disappointments at the outset, and feeling pain- 
fully the new circumstances which obliged her 
to make merchandise of her gifts and acquire- 
ments, she yet says that she rejoices over it all, 
" and would not have undertaken an iota less." 
Besides fulfilling her intention of self-support, 
she feels that she has gained in the power of 
attention, in self-command, and in the knowl- 
edge of methods of instruction, without in the 
least losing sight of the aims which had made 
hitherto the happiness and enthusiasm of her 
life. 

Here is, in brief, the tale of her winter's work. 

To one class she gave elementary instruction 
in German, and that so efficiently that her pupils 
were able to read the language with ease at the 
end of three months. With another class she read, 
in twenty-four weeks, Schiller's " Don Carlos," 



SEVERE LABOR. 63 

" Artists," and " Song of the Bell ; " Goethe's 
" Herrman iind Dorothea," *' Gotz von Berlich- 
ingen," *' Iphigenia," first part of *' Faust," and 
" Clavigo ; " Lessing's " Nathan der Weise," 
"Minna," and "Emilia Galotti;" parts of 
Tieck's " Phantasus," and nearly all of the first 
volume of Richter's "Titan." 

With the Italian class she read parts of Tasso, 
Petrarch, Ariosto, Alfieri, and the whole hun- 
dred cantos of Dante's " Divina Commedia." 
Besides these classes she had also three private 
pupils, one of them a boy unable to use his eyes 
in study. She gave this child oral instruction 
in Latin, and read to him the History of Eng- 
land and Shakespeare's plays in connection. 
The lessons given by her in Mr. Alcott's school 
were, she says, valuable to her, but also very 
fatiguing. 

Though already so much overtasked, Margaret 
found time and strength to devote one evening 
every week to the viva voce translation of Ger- 
man authors for Dr. Channing's benefit, reading 
to him mostly from De Wette and Herder. 
Much conversation accompanied these readings, 
and Margaret confesses that she finds therein 
much food for thought, while the Doctor's judg- 
ments appear to her deliberate, and his sym- 
pathies somewhat slow. She speaks of him as 
entirely without any assumption of superiority 



64 MARGARET FULLER. 

towards her, and as trusting " to the elevation of 
his thoughts to keep him in his place." She 
also greatly enjoyed his preaching, the force and 
earnestness of which seemed to her "to purge 
as by fire." 

If Margaret was able to review her winter's 
work with pleasure, we must regard it with 
mingled wonder and dismay. The range and 
extent of her labors were indeed admirable, 
combining such extremes as enabled her to 
minister to the needs of the children in Mr. 
Alcott's school, and to assist the studies of the 
most eminent divine of the day. If we look 
only at her classes in literature, we shall find 
it wonderful that a woman of twenty-six should 
have been able to give available instruction in 
directions so many and various. 

On the other hand, we must think that the 
immense extent of ground gone over involved 
too rapid a study of the separate works com- 
prised in it. Here was given a synopsis of lit- 
erary work which, properly performed, would 
fill a lifetime. It was no doubt valuable to her 
pupils through the vivifying influence of her 
enthusiastic imagination, which may have en- 
abled some of them, in after years, to fill out 
the sketch of culture so boldly and broadly 
drawn before their eyes. Yet, considered as 
instruction, it must, from its very extent, have 
been somewhat superficial. 



GREENE STREET SCHOOL. 65 

Our dismay would regard the remorseless 
degree in which Margaret, at this time, must 
have encroached upon the reserves of her bodily 
strength. Some physicists of to-day ascribe to 
women a peculiar power of concentrating upon 
one short effort an amount of vital force which 
should carry them through long years, and which, 
once expended, cannot be restored. Margaret's 
case would certainly justify this view ; for, while 
a mind so vigorous necessarily presupposes a 
body of uncommon vigor, she was after this time 
always a sufferer, and never enjoyed that perfect 
equipoise of function and of power which we call 
health. 

In the spring of the year 1837 Margaret was 
invited to fill an important post in the Greene 
Street School, at Providence, R. I. It was pro- 
posed that she should teach the elder girls four 
hours daily, arranging studies and courses at her 
own discretion, and receiving a salary of one 
thousand dollars per annum. 

Margaret hesitated to accept this offer, feel- 
ing inclined rather to renew her classes of the 
year just past, and having in mind also a life 
of Goethe which she greatly desired to write, 
and for which she was already collecting mate- 
rial. In the end, however, the prospect of im- 
mediate independence carried the day, and she 

5 



66 MARGARET FULLER. 

became the " Lady Superior," as she styles it, 
of the Providence school. Here a nearer view 
of the great need of her services stimulated her 
generous efforts, and she was rewarded by the 
love and reverence of her pupils, and by the 
knowledge that she did indeed bring them an 
awakening which led them from inert ignorance 
to earnest endeavor. 

Margaret's record of her stay in Providence is 
enlivened by portraits of some of the men of 
mark who came within her ken. Among these 
was Tristam Burgess, already old, whose bald- 
ness, she says, " increases the fine effect of his 
appearance, for it seems as if the locks had re- 
treated that the contour of his strongly marked 
head might be revealed." The eminent law- 
yer, Whipple, is not, she says, a man of the 
Webster class ; but is, in her eyes, first among 
men of the class immediately below, and wears 
"a pervading air of ease and mastery which 
shows him fit to be a leader of the flock." John 
Neal, of Portland, speaks to her girls on the 
destiny and vocation of woman in America, and 
in private has a long talk with her concern- 
ing woman, whigism, modern English poets, 
Shakespeare, and particularly " Richard the 
Third," concerning which play the two " actually 
had a fight." " Mr. Neal," she says, " does not 
argue quite fairly, for he uses reason while it 



DISTINGUISHED MEN. 67 

lasts, and then helps himself out with wit, senti- 
ment, and assertion." She hears a discourse and 
prayer from Joseph John Gurney, of England, 
in whose matter and manner she finds herself 
grievously disappointed : " Quakerism has at 
times looked lovely to me, and I had expected 
at least a spiritual exposition of its doctrines 
from the brother of Mrs. Fry. But his manner 
was as wooden as his matter. His figures were 
paltry, his thoughts narrowed down, and his 
very sincerity made corrupt by spiritual pride. 
The poet, Richard H. Dana, in those days gave 
a course of readings from the English drama- 
tists, beginning with Shakespeare. Margaret 
writes : — 

*'The introductory was beautiful. . . . All 
this was arrayed in a garb of most delicate 
grace ; but a man of such genuine refinement 
undervalues the cannon- blasts and rockets which 
are needed to rouse the attention of the vulgar. 
His naive gestures, the rapt expression of his 
face, his introverted eye, and the almost childlike 
simplicity of his pathos carry one back into 
a purer atmosphere, to live over again youth's 
fresh emotions." Her resmne of him ends with 
these words : "Mr. Dana has the charms and the 
defects of one whose object in life has been to 
preserve his individuality unprofaned." 

Margaret's connection with the Greene Street 



68 MARGARET FULLER. 

School in Providence lasted two years. Her suc- 
cess in this work was considered very great, and 
her brief residence in Rhode Island was crowned 
with public esteem and with many valued friend- 
ships. 

Her parting from the pupils here was not with- 
out tears on both sides. Although engaged to 
teach the elder girls, Margaret's care had ex- 
tended over the younger ones, and also over 
some of the boys. With all she exchanged an 
affectionate farewell, in which words of advice 
were mingled. To the class of girls which had 
been her especial charge she made a farewell 
address whose impressive sentences must have 
been long remembered. Here are some of 
them : — 

" I reminded them of the ignorance in which 
some of them had been found, and showed them 
how all my efforts had necessarily been directed 
to stimulating their minds, leaving undone much 
which, under other circumstances, would have 
been deemed indispensable. I thanked them 
for the moral beauty of their conduct, bore wit- 
ness that an appeal to conscience had never 
failed, and told them of my happiness in having 
the faith thus confirmed that young persons 
can be best guided by addressing their highest 
nature. I assured them of my true friendship, 
proved by my never having cajoled or caressed 



MISS MARTINEAU'S BOOK. 69 

them into good. All my influence over them 
was rooted in reality ; I had never softened nor 
palliated their faults. I had appealed, not to 
their weakness, but to their strength. I had 
offered to them always the loftiest motives, and 
had made every other end subservient to that 
of spiritual growth. With a heart-felt blessing 
Ldismissed them." 

In those days appeared Miss Martineau's book 
on America, of which we may say that its 
sharply critical tone stirred the national con- 
sciousness, and brought freshly into considera- 
tion the question of negro slavery, the discussion 
of which had been by common consent banished 
from " good " society in the United States. Miss 
Martineau dared to reprobate this institution 
in uncompromising language, and, while show- 
ing much appreciation of the natural beauties of 
the country, was generally thought to have done 
injustice to its moral and social characteristics. 

While Margaret regarded with indignation the 
angry abuse with which her friend's book was 
greeted on this side of the Atlantic, she felt 
obliged to express to her the disappointment 
which she herself had felt on reading it. She 
acknowledges that the work has been " garbled, 
misrepresented, scandalously ill-treated." Yet 
she speaks of herself as one of those who, see- 



70 MARGARET FULLER. 

ing in the book "a degree of presumptiiousness, 
irreverence, inaccuracy, hasty generaHzation, and 
ultraism on many points which they did not 
expect, lament the haste in which you have writ- 
ten, and the injustice which you have conse- 
quently done to so important a task, and to your 
own powers of being and doing." 

Among other grievances, Margaret especially 
felt the manner in which Miss Martineau had 
written about Mr. Alcott. This she could not 
pass over without com.ment : "A true and noble 
man ; a philanthropist, whom a true and noble 
woman, also a philanthropist, should have de- 
lighted to honor ; a philosopher, worthy the 
palmy times of ancient Greece ; a man whom 
the worldlings of Boston hold in as much horror 
as the worldlings of ancient Athens did Socrates. 
They smile to hear their verdict confirmed from 
the other side of the Atlantic by their censor, 
Harriet Martineau." 

Margaret expresses in this letter the fear lest 
the frankness of her strictures should deprive her 
of the regard of her friend, but says, ''If your 
heart turns from me, I shall still love you, still 
think you noble." 

In 1840 Margaret was solicited to become the 
editor of the " Dial," and undertook, for two 
years, the management of the magazine, which 



EDITORSHIP OF THE ''DIAL:' 71 

was at this time considered as the organ of the 
TranscendentaHsts. The " Dial " was a quarterly 
publication, somewhat nebulous in its character, 
but valuable as the expression of fresh thought, 
stimulating to culture of a new order. Like the 
transcendental movement itself, it had in it 
the germs of influences which in the course of the 
last forty years have come to be widely felt and 
greatly prized. In the newness of its birth and 
origin, it needed nursing fathers and nursing 
mothers, but was fed mostly, so far as concerns 
the general public, with neglect and ridicule. 

Margaret, besides laboring with great dili- 
gence in her editorship, contributed to its pages 
many papers on her favorite points of study, 
such as Goethe, Beethoven, Romaic poetry, John 
Stirling, etc. Of the " Dial," Mr. Emerson says : 
** Good or bad, it cost a good deal of precious 
labor from those who served it, and from Mar- 
garet most of all." As there were no funds be- 
hind the enterprise, contributors were not paid 
for their work, and Margaret's modest salary of 
two hundred dollars per annum was discon- 
tinued after the first year. 

The magazine lived four years. In England 
and Scotland it achieved a siicces d'estiute, and 
a republication of it in these days is about to 
make tardy amends for the general indifference 
which allowed its career to terminate so briefly. 



72 MARGARET FULLER. 

Copies of the original work, now a literary 
curiosity, can here and there be borrowed from 
individuals who have grown old in the service 
of human progress. A look into the carefully 
preserved volumes shows us the changes which 
time has wrought in the four decades of years 
which have elapsed (quite or nearly) since the 
appearance of the last number. 

A melancholy touches us as we glance hither 
and thither among its pages. How bright are 
the morning hours marked on this Dial ! How 
merged now in the evening twilight and dark- 
ness ! Here is Ralph Waldo Emerson, with 
life's meridian still before him. Here are printed 
some of his earliest lectures and some of the 
most admired of his poems. Here are the grace- 
ful verses of Christopher P. Cranch, artist and 
poet. Here are the Channing cousins, nephews 
of the great man by different brothers, one, Wil- 
liam Henry Channing, then, as always, fervid 
and unrelinquishing in faith ; the other, William 
Ellery, a questioner who, not finding himself 
answered to his mind, has ceased to ask. Here 
is Theodore Parker, a youthful critic of existing 
methods and traditions, already familiar with the 
sacred writings of many religions. A. Bronson 
Alcott appears in various forms, contributing 
" Days from a Diary," " Orphic Sayings," and so 
on. Here are, from various authors, papers en- 



EDITORSHIP OF THE ''DIAL:' ^l 

titled : " Social Tendencies," " The Interior or 
Hidden Life," " The Pharisees," " Prophecy, Tran- 
scendentalism, and Progress," " Leaves from a 
Scholar's Journal," " Ethnic Scriptures," " The 
Preaching of Buddha," " Out-World and In- 
World," — headings which themselves afford an 
insight into the direction of the speculative 
thought and fancy of the time. An article on 
the Hollis Street Council presents to us the 
long-forgotten controversy between Rev. John 
Pierpont and his congregation, "to settle which a 
conference of the Unitarian clergy was sum- 
moned. Another, entitled " Chardon Street and 
Bible Conventions," records the coming to- 
gether of a company of " madmen, mad women, 
men with beards, Dunkers, Muggletonians, 
Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Seventh-day 
Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calvinists, Uni- 
tarians, and Philosophers," to discuss church dis- 
cipline and the authenticity of the Bible. Among 
those present were Dr. Channing, Father Tay- 
lor, Mr. Alcott, Mr. Garrison, Jones Very, and 
Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman. The chronicler 
says that "the assembly was characterized by the 
predominance of a certain plain, sylvan strength 
and earnestness, while many of the most intel- 
lectual and cultivated persons attended its coun- 
cils. Mrs. Little and Mrs. Lucy Sessions took a 
pleasing and memorable part in the debate, and 



74 MARGARET FULLER, 

that flea of Conventions, Mrs. Abigail Folsom, 
was but too ready with her interminable scroll." 
In the July number of the year 1842 many 
pages are devoted to a rehearsal of " the enter- 
tainments of the past winter," which treats of 
Fanny Elssler's dancing, Braham's singing, ora- 
torios, symphony concerts, and various lectures. 
Among these last, those of Mr. Lyell (afterwards 
Sir Charles) are curtly dismissed as " a neat arti- 
cle," while those of Henry Giles are recognized 
as showing popular talent. 

Among Margaret's own contributions to the 
*' Dial," the article on Goethe and that entitled 
"The Great Lawsuit" are perhaps the most 
noteworthy. We shall find the second of these 
expanded into the well-known ** Woman in the 
Nineteenth Century," of which mention will be 
made hereafter. The one first named seems to 
demand some notice here, the fine discrimination 
of its criticism showing how well qualified the 
writer was to teach the women of her day the 
true appreciation of genius, and to warn them 
from the idolatry which worships the faults as 
well as the merits of great minds. 

From a lover of Goethe, such sentences as 
the following were scarcely to have been ex- 
pected : — 

" Pardon him, World, that he was too worldly. 
Do not wonder, Heart, that he was so heartless. 



CRITICISM OF GOETHE. 75 

Believe, Soul, that one so true, as far as he went, 
must yet be initiated into the deeper mysteries 
of soul. 

" Naturally of a deep mind and shallow heart, 
he felt the sway of the affections enough to ap- 
preciate their working in other men, but never 
enough to receive their inmost regenerating in- 
fluence." 

Margaret finds a decline of sentiment and 
poetic power in Goethe, dating from his relin- 
quishment of Lili. 

"After this period we find in him rather a 
wide and deep wisdom than the inspirations of 
genius. His faith that all must issue well wants 
the sweetness of piety ; and the God he mani- 
fests to us is one of law or necessity rather than 
of intelligent love. 

"This mastery that Goethe prizes seems to 
consist rather in the skilful use of means than in 
the clear manifestation of ends. Yet never let 
him be confounded with those who sell all their 
birthright. He became blind to the more gen- 
erous virtues, the nobler impulses, but ever in 
self-respect was busy to develop his nature. He 
was kind, industrious, wise, gentlemanly, if not 
manly." 

Margaret, with bold and steady hand, draws a 
parallel between Dante's " Paradiso" and the sec- 
ond part of Goethe's " Faust." She prefers " the 



^6 MARGARET FULLER. 

grandly humble reliance of old Catholicism " to 
"the loop-hole redemption of modern sagacity." 
Yet she thinks that Dante, perhaps, "had not so 
hard a battle to wage as this other great poet." 
The fiercest passions she finds less dangerous to 
the soul than the cold scepticism of the under- 
standing. She sums up grandly the spiritual 
ordeals of different historical periods : — 

" The Jewish demon assailed the man of Uz 
with physical ills, the Lucifer of the Middle Ages 
tempted his passions ; but the Mephistopheles 
of the eighteenth century bade the finite strive 
to compass the infinite, and the intellect attempt 
to solve all the problems of the soul." 

Among Margaret's published papers on litera- 
ture and art is one entitled "A Record of Im- 
pressions produced by the Exhibition of Mr. 
Allston's Pictures in the Summer of 1839." She 
was moved to write this, she says, partly by the 
general silence of the press on a matter of so 
much import in the history of American art, and 
partly by the desire to analyze her own views, 
and to ascertain, if possible, the reason why, at 
the close of the exhibition, she found herself less 
a gainer by it than she had expected. As Mar- 
garet gave much time and thought to art mat- 
ters, and as the Allston exhibition was really an 
event of historic interest, some consideration 



ALLSrON'S PICTURES. 7/ 

of this paper will not be inappropriate in this 
place. 

Washington Allston was at that time, had 
long been, and long continued to be, the artist 
saint of Boston. A great personal prestige 
added its power to that of his unquestioned 
genius. 

Beautiful in appearance, as much a poet as a 
painter, he really seemed to belong to an order 
of beings who might be called 

" Too bright and good 
For human nature's daily food." 

He had flown into the heart of Europe when 
few American artists managed to get so far. He 
had returned to live alone with his dreams, of 
which one was the nightmare of a great paint- 
ing which he never could finish, and never did. 
He had kept the vulgar world at a distance from 
his life and thought, intent on coining these into 
a succession of pictures which claimed to have 
a mission to the age. The series of female heads 
which are the most admirable of his works ap- 
peared to be the portraits of as many ideal 
women who, with no existence elsewhere, had dis- 
closed themselves to him at his dreamy fireside 
or in his haunted studio. The spirit of the age, 
in its highest extreme, was upon him, and the 
wave of supervital aspiration swept him, as it did 



78 MARGARET FULLER. 

Channing and Emerson, beyond the region of the 
visible and sensible. At that day, and for ten 
years later, one might occasionally have seen in 
some street of Boston a fragile figure, and upon 
it a head distinguished by snowy curls and starry 
eyes. Here was the winter of age ; here the 
perpetual summer of the soul. The coat and 
hat did not matter ; but they were of some 
quaint, forgotten fashion, outlining the vision as 
belonging to the past. You felt a modesty in 
looking at anything so unique and delicate. I 
remember this vision as suddenly disclosed out 
of a bitter winter's day. And the street was 
Chestnut Street, and the figure was Washington 
AUston going to visit the poet Richard H. 
Dana. And not long afterwards the silvery 
snows melted, and the soul which had made 
those eyes so luminous shot back to its immor- 
tal sphere. 

But, to leave the man and return to the artist. 
Mr. Allston's real merit was too great to be 
seriously obscured by the over-sweep of imagina- 
tion to which he was subject. His best works 
still remain true classics of the canvas ; but the 
spirit which, through them, seemed to pass from 
his mind into that of the public, has not to-day 
the recognition and commanding interest which 
it then had. 

Margaret had expected, as she says, to be 



ALLSTON'S PICTURES. 79 

greatly a gainer by her study of this exhibition, 
and had been somewhat disappointed. Possibly 
her expectations regarded a result too immediate 
and definite. Sights and experiences that en- 
rich the mind often do so insensibly. They pass 
out of our consciousness ; but in our later judg- 
ments we find our standard changed, and refer 
back to them as the source of its enlargement. 

Margaret was already familiar with several of 
the ideal heads of which we have spoken, and 
which bore the names of Beatrice, Rosalie, the 
Valentine, etc. Of these, as previously seen and 
studied, she says : — 

"The calm and meditative cast of these pic- 
tures, the ideal beauty that shone through rather 
than in them, and the harmony of coloring were 
as unlike anything else I saw, as the 'Vicar 
of Wakefield' to Cooper's novels. I seemed to 
recognize in painting that self-possessed ele- 
gance, that transparent depth, which I most 
admire in literature." 

With these old favorites she classes, as most 
beautiful among those now shown, the Even- 
ing Hymn, the Italian Shepherd Boy, Edwin, 
Lorenzo and Jessica. 

" The excellence of these pictures is sub- 
jective, and even feminine. They tell us the 
painter's ideal of character : a graceful repose, 
with a fitness for moderate action ; a capacity 



8o MARGARET FULLER. 

of emotion, with a habit of reverie. Not one 
of these beings is in a state of epanchement. 
Not one is, or perhaps could be, thrown off its 
equipoise. They are, even the softest, charac- 
terized by entire though unconscious self-posses- 
sion." 

The head called Beatrice was sometimes 
spoken of in those days as representing the 
Beatrice of Dante. Margaret finds in it nothing 
to suggest the " Divina Commedia." 

" How fair, indeed, and not unmeet for a poet's 
love. But what she is, what she can be, it 
needs no Dante to discover. She is not a lus- 
trous, bewitching beauty, neither is she a high 
and poetic one. She is not a concentrated per- 
fume, nor a flower, nor a star. Yet somewhat 
has she of every creature's best. She has the 
golden mean, without any touch of the medi- 
ocre." 

The landscapes in the exhibition gave her 
"unalloyed delight." She found in them Mr. 
Allston's true mastery, — "a power of sympathy, 
which gives each landscape a perfectly individ- 
ual character. . . . The soul of the painter," 
she says, "is in these landscapes, but not his 
character. Is not that the highest art } Nature 
and the soul combined ; the former freed from 
crudities or blemishes, the latter from its merely 
human aspect." 



ALLSTON'S PICTURES. 8 1 

Allston's Miriam suggests to Margaret a dif- 
ferent treatment of the subject: — 

" This maiden had been nurtured in a fair and 
highly civihzed country, in the midst of wrong 
and scorn indeed, but beneath the shadow of 
sublime institutions. Amid all the pains and 
penances of slavery, the memory of Joseph, the 
presence of Moses, exalt her soul to the highest 
pitch of national pride. 

" Imagine the stately and solemn beauty with 
which such nurture and such a position might 
invest the Jewish Miriam. Imagine her at the 
moment when her lips were unsealed, and she 
was permitted to sing the song of deliverance. 
Realize this situation, and oh, how far will this 
beautiful picture fall short of your demands ! " 

To such a criticism Mr. Aliston might have 
replied that a picture in words is one thing, a 
picture in colors quite another ; and that the 
complex intellectual expression in which Mar- 
garet delighted is appropriate to literary, but 
not to pictorial art. 

Much in the same way does she reason con- 
cerning one of Allston's most admired paintings, 
which represents Jeremiah in prison dictating to 
Baruch : — 

" The form of the prophet is brought out in 
such noble relief, is in such fine contrast to the 
pale and feminine sweetness of the scribe at his 
6 



82 MARGARET FULLER. 

feet, that for a time you are satisfied. But by 
and by you begin to doubt whether this picture 
is not rather imposing than majestic. The dig- 
nity of the prophet's appearance seems to lie 
rather in the fine lines of the form and drapery 
than in the expression of the face. It was well 
observed by one who looked on him, that, if the 
eyes were cast down, he would become an ordi- 
nary man. This is true, and the expression of 
the bard must not depend on a look or gesture, 
but beam with mild electricity from every fea- 
ture. Allston's Jeremiah is not the mournfully 
indignant bard, but the robust and stately Jew, 
angry that men will not mark his word and go 
his way." 

The test here imagined, that of concealing 
the eyes, would answer as little in real as in 
pictured life. Although the method of these 
criticisms is arbitrary, the conclusion to which 
they bring Margaret is one in which many will 
agree with her : — 

" The more I have looked at these pictures, 
the more I have been satisfied that the grand 
historical style did not afford the scope most 
proper to Mr. Allston's genius. The Prophets 
and Sibyls are for the Michael Angelos. The 
Beautiful is Mr. Allston's dominion. Here he 
rules as a genius, but in attempts such as I have 
been considering, can only show his apprecia- 



ALLSTON'S PICTURES. 83 

tion of the stern and sublime thoughts he wants 
force to reproduce." 

Margaret is glad to ^o back from these more 
labored and unequal compositions to those lovely 
feminine creations which had made themselves 
so beloved that they seemed to belong to the 
spiritual family of Boston itself, and to " have 
floated across the painter's heaven on the golden 
clouds of fantasy." 

From this paper our thoughts naturally revert 
to what Mr. Emerson has said of Margaret as an 
art critic : — 

" Margaret's love of art, like that of most cul- 
tivated persons in this country, was not at all 
technical, but truly a sympathy with the artist 
in the protest which his work pronounced on 
the deformity of our daily manners ; her co-per- 
ception with him of the eloquence of form ; her 
aspiration with him to a fairer life. As soon as 
her conversation ran into the mysteries of ma- 
nipulation and artistic effect, it was less trust- 
worthy. I remember that in the first times when 
I chanced to see pictures with her, I listened rev- 
erently to her opinions, and endeavored to see 
what she saw. But on several occasions, find- 
ing myself unable to reach it, I came to suspect 
my guide, and to believe at last that her taste 
in works of art, though honest, was not on uni- 
versal, but on idiosyncratic grounds." 



CHAPTER VI. 

WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING's PORTRAIT OF MAR- 
GARET. — TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS. BROOK 

FARM. — Margaret's visits there. 

It is now time for us to speak of the portrait of 
Margaret drawn by the hand of WilHam Henry 
Channing. And first give us leave to say that 
Mr. Emerson's very valuable statements con- 
cerning her are to be prized rather for their 
critical and literary appreciation than accepted 
as showing the insight given by strong personal 
sympathy. 

While bound to each other by mutual esteem 
and admiration, Margaret and Mr. Emerson 
were opposites in natural tendency, if not in 
character. While Mr. Emerson never appeared 
to be modified by any change of circumstance, 
never melted nor took fire, but was always and 
everywhere himself, the soul of Margaret was 
subject to a glowing passion which raised the 
temperature of the social atmosphere around 
her. Was this atmosphere heavy with human 
dulness ? Margaret so smote the ponderous 
demon with her fiery wand that he was presently 



CHANNING'S PORTRAIT OF MARGARET. 85 

compelled to " caper nimbly " for her amusement, 
or to flee from her presence. Was sorrow mas- 
ter of the situation ? Of this tyranny Margaret 
was equally intolerant. The mourner must be 
uplifted through her to new hope and joy. Fri- 
volity and all unworthiness had reason to fear 
her, for she denounced them to the face, with 
somnambulic unconcern. But where high joys 
were in the ascendant, there stood Margaret, 
quick with her inner interpretation, adding to 
human rapture itself the deep, calm lessoning of 
divine reason. A priestess of life-glories, she 
magnified her office, and in its grandeur some- 
times grew grandiloquent. But with all this 
her sense was solid, and her meaning clear and 
worthy. 

Mr. Emerson had also a priesthood, but of a 
different order. The calm, severe judgment, 
the unpardoning taste, the deliberation which 
not only preceded but also followed his utter- 
ances, carried him to a remoteness from the 
common life of common people, and allowed no 
intermingling of this life with his own. For 
him, too, came a time of fusion which vindicated 
his interest in the great issues of his time. But 
this was not in Margaret's day, and to her he 
seemed the palm-tree in the desert, graceful 
and admirable, bearing aloft a waving crest, but 
spreading no sheltering and embracing branches. 



86 MARGARET FULLER. 

William Henry Channing, whose reminis- 
cences' of Margaret stand last in order in the 
memoirs already published, was more nearly 
allied to her in character than either of his 
coadjutors. If Mr. Emerson's bane was a want 
of fusion, the ruling characteristic of Mr. Chan- 
ning was a heart that melted almost too easily 
at the touch of human sympathy, and whose 
heat and glow of feeling may sometimes have 
overswept the calmer power of judgment. 

He had heard of Margaret in her school-girl 
days as a prodigy of talent and attainment. 
During the period of his own studies in Cam- 
bridge he first made her acquaintance. He 
was struck, but not attracted, by her " saucy 
sprightliness." Her intensity of temperament, 
unmeasured satire, and commanding air were 
indeed somewhat repellent to him, and almost 
led him to conjecture that she had chosen for her 
part in life the 7^0/e of a Yankee Corinne. Her 
friendships, too, seemed to him extravagant. He 
dreaded the encounter of a personality so impe- 
rious and uncompromising in its demands, and 
was content to observe her at a safe and re- 
spectful distance. Soon, however, through the 
" shining fog " of brilliant wit and sentiment 
the real nobility of her nature made itself seen 
and felt. He found her sagacious in her judg- 
ments. Her conversation showed breadth of 



CHANNING'S PORTRAIT OF MARGARET. 8/ 

culture and depth of thought. Above all, he 
was made to feel her great sincerity of purpose. 
" This it was," says he, " that made her criticism 
so trenchant, her contempt of pretence so quick 
and stern." The loftiness of her ideal explained 
the severity of her judgments, and the heroic 
mould and impulse of her character had much 
to do with her stately deportment. Thus the 
salient points which, at a distance, had seemed 
to him defects, were found, on a nearer view, to 
be the indications of qualities most rare and ad- 
mirable. 

James Freeman Clarke, an intimate of both 
parties, made them better known to each other 
by his cordial interpretation of each to each. 
But it was in the year 1839, in the days of 
Margaret's residence at Jamaica Plain, that the 
friendship between these two eminent persons, 
" long before rooted, grew up, and leafed, and 
blossomed." Mr. Channing traces the begin- 
ning of this nearer relation to a certain day on 
which he sought Margaret amid these new sur- 
roundings. It was a bright summer day. The 
windows of Margaret's parlor commanded a 
pleasant view of meadows, with hills beyond. 
She entered, bearing a vase of freshly gathered 
flowers, her own tribute just levied from the gar- 
den. Of these, and of their significance, was 
her first speech. From these she passed to the 



S8 MARGARET FULLER. 

engravings which adorned her walls, and to much 
talk of art and artists. From this theme an easy 
transition led the conversation to Greece and its 
mythology. A little later, Margaret began to 
speak of the friends whose care had surrounded 
her with these objects of her delighting contem- 
plation. The intended marriage of two of the 
best beloved among these friends was much in her 
mind at the moment, and Mr. Channing compares 
the gradation of thought by which she arrived 
at the announcement of this piece of intelligence 
to the progress and denoiiemeiit of a drama, so 
eloquent and artistic did it appear to him. 

A ramble in Bussey's woods followed this in- 
door interview. In his account of it Mr. Chan- 
ning has given us not only a record of much 
that Margaret said, but also a picture of how 
she looked on that ever-remembered day. 

" Reaching a moss-cushioned ledge near the 
summit, she seated herself. . . . As, leaning on 
one arm, she poured out her stream of thought, 
turning now and then her eyes full upon me, to see 
whether I caught her meaning, there was leisure 
to study her thoroughly. Her temperament was 
predominantly what the physiologists would call 
nervous-sanguine ; and the gray eye, rich brown 
hair, and light complexion, with the muscular 
and well-developed frame, bespoke delicacy bal- 
anced by vigor. Here was a sensitive yet pow- 



CHANNING'S PORTRAIT OF MARGARET. 89 

erful being, fit at once for rapture or sustained 
effort. She certainly had not beauty ; yet the 
high-arched dome of the head, the changeful ex- 
pressiveness of every feature, and her whole air 
of mingled dignity and impulse gave her a com- 
manding charm." 

Mr. Channing mentions, as others do, Marga- 
ret's habit of shutting her eyes, and opening them 
suddenly, with a singular dilatation of the iris. 
He dwells still more upon the pliancy of her neck, 
the expression of which varied with her mood of 
mind. In moments of tender or pensive feeling 
its curves were like those of a swan ; under the 
influence of indignation its movements were more 
like the swoopings of a bird of prey. 

" Finally, in the animation yet abandon of 
Margaret's attitude and look were rarely blended 
the fiery force of Northern, and the soft languor 
of Southern races." 

Until this day Mr. Channing had known Mar- 
garet through her intellect only. This conver- 
sation of many hours revealed her to him in a 
new light. It unfolded to him her manifold gifts 
and her deep experience, her great capacity for 
joy, and the suffering through which she had 
passed. She should have been an acknowledged 
queen among the magnates of European cul- 
ture : she was hedged about by the narrow intol- 
erance of provincial New England. 



90 MARGARET FULLER. 

In a more generous soil her genius would 
have borne fruit of the highest order. She felt 
this, felt that she failed of this highest result, 
and was yet so patient, so faithful to duty, so 
considerate of all who had claims upon her ! 
Perceiving now the ardor of her nature and the 
strength of her self-sacrifice, Margaret's new 
friend could not but bow in reverence before 
her ; and from that time the two always met as 
intimates. 

Mr. Channing's reminiscences preserve for us 
a valuable ape^it of the Transcendental move- 
ment in New England, and of Margaret's rela- 
tion to it. 

The circle of the Transcendentalists was, for 
the moment, a new church, with the joy and 
pain^of a new evangel in its midst. In the very 
heart of New England Puritanism, at that day 
hard, dry, and thorny, had sprung up a new 
growth, like the blossoming of a century-plant, 
beautiful and inconvenient. Boundaries had to 
be enlarged for it ; for if society would not give 
it room, it was determined to go outside of so- 
ciety, and to assert, at all hazards, the freedom 
of inspiration. 

While this movement was in a good degree 
one of simple protest and reaction, it yet drew 
much of its inspiration from foreign countries 
and periods of time remote from our own. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DAYS. ' 9 1 

From the standpoint of the present it looked 
deeply into the past and into the future. Its 
leaders studied Plato, Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch, 
among the classic authors, and De Wette, He- 
gel, Kant, and Fichte, among the prophets of 
modern thought. The welt-geist of the Germans 
was its ideal. Method, it could not boast. Free 
discussion, abstinence from participation in or- 
dinary social life and religious worship, a restless 
seeking for sympathy, and a constant formula- 
tion of sentiments which, exalted in themselves, 
seemed to lose something of their character by 
the frequency with which they were presented, 
— these are some of the traits which Transcen- 
dentalism showed to the uninitiated. 

To its Greek and Germanic elements was pres- 
ently added an influence borrowed from the sys- 
tematic genius of France. The works of Fourier 
became a gospel of hope to those who looked 
for a speedy regeneration of society. George 
Ripley, an eminent scholar and critic, determined 
to embody this^ hope in a grand experiment, and 
bravely organized the Brook Farm Community 
upon a plan as nearly in accordance with the 
principles laid down by Fourier as circumstances 
would allow. He was accompanied in this new 
departure by a little band of fellow-workers, of 
whom one or two were already well known as 
literary men, while others of them have since 
attained distinction in various walks of life. 



92 ' MARGARET FULLER. 

While all the TranscendentaHsts were not 
associationists, the family at Brook Farm was 
yet considered as an outcome of the new move- 
ment, and as such was regarded by its promoters 
with great sympathy and interest. 

Margaret's position among the Transcendental- 
ists may easily be imagined. In such a group 
of awakened thinkers her place was soon deter- 
mined. At their frequent reunions she was a 
most welcome and honored guest. More than 
this. Among those who claimed a fresh out- 
pouring of the Spirit Margaret was recognized 
as a bearer of the living word. She was not in 
haste to speak on these occasions, but seemed 
for a time absorbed in listening and in observa- 
tion. When the moment came, she showed the 
results of this attention by briefly restating the 
points already touched upon, passing thence to 
the unfolding of her own views. This she seems 
always to have done with much force, and with 
a grace no less remarkable. She spoke slowly 
at first, with the deliberation inseparable from 
weight of thought. As she proceeded, images 
and illustrations suggested themselves to her 
mind in rapid succession. " The sweep of her 
speech became grand," says Mr. Channing. Her 
eloquence was direct and vigorous. Her wide 
range of reading supplied her with ready and 
copious illustrations. The commonplace be- 



BROOK FARM. 93 

came original from her way of treating it. She 
had power to analyze, power to sum up. Her 
use of language had a rhythmic charm. She was 
sometimes grandiloquent, sometimes excessive in 
her denunciation of popular evils and abuses, but 
her sincerity of purpose, her grasp of thought and 
keenness of apprehension, were felt throughout. 

The source of these and similar sibylline mani- 
festations is a subtle one. Such a speaker, 
consciously or unconsciously, draws much of her 
inspiration from the minds of those around her. 
Each of these in a measure affects her, while she 
still remains mistress of herself. Her thought 
is upheld by the general sympathy, which she 
suddenly lifts to a height undreamed of before. 
She divines what each most purely wishes, most 
deeply hopes ; and so her words reveal to those 
present not only their own unuttered thoughts, 
but also the higher significance and complete- 
ness which she is able to give to these thoughts 
under the seal of her own conviction. These 
fleeting utterances, alas ! are lost, like the leaves 
swept of old from the sibyl's cave. But as souls 
are, after all, the most permanent facts that we 
know of, who shall say that one breath of them 
is wasted .'' 

Young hearts to-day, separated from the time 
we speak of by two or three generations, may 



94 MARGARET FULLER. 

Still keep the generous thrill which Margaret 
awakened in the bosom of a grandmother, her- 
self then in the bloom of youth. Books, indeed, 
are laid away and forgotten, manuscripts are lost 
or destroyed. Th§ spoken word, fleeting though 
it be, may kindle a flame that ages shall not 
quench, but only brighten. 

While, therefore, it may well grieve us to-day 
that we cannot know exactly what Margaret said 
nor how she said it, we may believe that the in- 
spiration which she felt and communicated to 
others remains, not the less, a permanent value 
in the community. 

Having already somewhat the position of a 
*' come-outer," Margaret was naturally supposed 
to be in entire sympathy with the Transcenden- 
talists. This supposition was strengthened by 
her assuming the editorship of the " Dial," and 
Christopher Cranch, in caricaturing it, repre- 
sented her as a Minerva driving a team of the 
Ti^^N illuminati. Margaret's journals and letters, 
however, show that while she welcomed the new 
outlook towards a possible perfection, she did not 
accept without reserve the enthusiasms of those 
about her. "The good time coming," which 
seemed to them so near, appeared to her very 
distant, and difficult of attainment. Her views 
at the outset are aptly expressed in the following 
extract from one of her letters: — 



BROOK FARM. 95 

" Utopia it is impossible to build up. At least, 
my hopes for our race on this one planet 
are more limited than those of most of my 
friends. I accept the limitations of human na- 
ture, and believe a wise acknowledgment of 
them one of the best conditions of progress. 
Yet every noble scheme, every poetic manifes- 
tation, prophesies to man his eventual destiny. 
And were not man ever more sanguine than 
facts at the moment justify, he would remain 
torpid, or be sunk in sensuality. It is on this 
ground that I sympathize with what is called the 
'Transcendental party,' and that I feel their aim 
to be the true one." 

The grievance maintained against society by 
the new school of thought was of a nature to 
make the respondent say : *' We have piped 
unto you, and ye have not danced ; we have 
mourned unto you, and ye have not wept." The 
status of New England, social and political, was 
founded upon liberal traditions. Yet these 
friends placed themselves in opposition to the 
whole existing order of things. The Unitarian 
discipline had delivered them from the yoke of 
doctrines impossible to an age of critical culture. 
They reproached it with having taken away the 
mystical ideas which, in imaginative minds, had 
made the poetry of the old faith. Margaret, 
writing of these things in 1840, well says : 



96 MARGARET FULLER. 

'' Since the Revolution there has been Httle in 
the circumstances of this country to call out 
the higher sentiments. The effect of continued 
prosperity is the same on nations as on indi- 
viduals ; it leaves the nobler faculties undevel- 
oped. The superficial diffusion o"f knowledge, 
unless attended by a deepening of its sources, 
is likely to vulgarize rather than to raise the 
thought of a nation. . . . The tendency of circum- 
stances has been to make our people superficial, 
irreverent, and more anxious to get a living than 
to live mentally and morally." So much for the 
careless crowd. In another sentence, Margaret 
gives us the clew to much of the "divine discon- 
tent" felt by deeper thinkers. She says : "How 
much those of us who have been formed by the 
European mind have to unlearn and lay aside, if 
we would act here ! " 

The scholars of New England had indeed so 
devoted themselves to the study of foreign litera- 
tures as to be little famihar with the spirit and 
the needs of their own country. The England 
of the English classics, the Germany of the 
German poets and philosophers, the Italy of the 
Renaissance writers and artists, combined to 
make the continent in which their thoughts 
were at home. The England of the commonalty, 
the Germany and Italy of the peasant and ar- 
tisan, were little known to them, and as little 



VISITS TO BROOK FARM, 97 

the characteristic qualities and defects of their 
own country-people. Hence their comparison of 
the old society with the new was in great part 
founded upon what we may call " literary illu- 
sions." Moreover, the German and English 
methods of thought were only partially applica- 
ble to a mode of life whose conditions far tran- 
scended those of European life in their freedom 
and in the objects recognized as common to all. 

Those of us who have numbered threescore 
years can remember the perpetual lamentation 
of the cultivated American of forty years ago. 
His whole talk was a cataloguing of negatives : 
" We have not this, we have not that." To all of 
which the true answer would have been : ** You 
have a wonderful country, an exceptional race, 
an unparalleled opportunity. You have not yet 
made your five talents ten. That is what you 
should set about immediately." 

The Brook Farm experiment probably ap« 
peared to Margaret in the light of an Utopia. 
Her regard for the founders of the enterprise 
induced her, nevertheless, to visit the place fre- 
quently. Of the first of these visits her journal 
has preserved a full account. 

The aspect of the new settlement at first ap- 
peared to her somewhat desolate : " You seem 
to belong to 'nobody, to have a right to speak to 
nobody ; but very soon you learn to take care of 

7 



98 MARGARET FULLER. 

yourself, and then the freedom of the place is 
delightful." 

The society of Mr. and Mrs. Ripley was most 
congenial to her, and the nearness of the woods 
afforded an opportunity for the rambles in which 
she delighted. But her time was not all dedi- 
cated to these calm pleasures. Soon she had 
won the confidence of several of the inmates of 
the place, who imparted to her their heart histo- 
ries, seeking that aid and counsel which she was 
so well able to give. She mentions the holding 
of two conversations during this visit, in both of 
which she was the leader. The first was on 
Education, a subject concerning which her ideas 
differed from those adopted by the Community. 
The manners of some of those present were too 
free and easy to be agreeable to Margaret, who 
was accustomed to deference. 

At the second conversation, some days later, 
the circle was smaller, and no one showed any 
sign of weariness or indifference. The subject 
was Impulse, chosen by Margaret because she 
observed among her new friends " a great ten- 
dency to advocate spontaneousness at the ex- 
pense of reflection." Of her own part in this 
exercise she says : — ■ 

" I defended nature, as I always do, — the spirit 
ascending through, not superseding nature. But 
in the scale ot sense, intellect, spirit, I advo- 



VISITS TO BROOK FARM. 99 

cated to-night the claims of intellect, because 
those present were rather disposed to postpone 
them." 

After the lapse of a year she found the tone 
of the society much improved, The mere freak- 
ishness of unrestraint had yielded to a recog- 
nition of the true conditions of liberty, and 
tolerance was combined with sincerity. 



• CHAPTER VII. 

Margaret's love of children. — visit to con- 
cord AFTER THE DEATH OF WALDO EMERSON. 

— CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. SUMMER ON 

THE LAKES. 

Among Margaret's life-long characteristics v/as 
a genuine love of little children, which sprang 
from a deep sense of the beauty and sacredness 
of childhood. When she visited the homes of 
her friends, the little ones of their households 
were taken into the circle of her loving attention. 
Three of these became so especially dear to her 
that she called them her children. These were 
Waldo Emerson, Pickie Greeley, and Herman 
Clarke. For each of them the span of earthly 
life was short, no one of them living to pass out 
of childhood. 

Waldo was the eldest son of Mr. Emerson, 
the child deeply mourned and commemorated 
by him in the well-known threnody : — 

" The hyacinthine boy for whom 
Morn well might break and April bloom. 
The gracious boy who did adorn 
The world whereinto he "Was born, 



VISIT TO CONCORD. 10 1 

And by his countenance repay 

The favor of the loving Day, 

Has disappeared from the Day's eye. 

This death occurred in 1841. Margaret visited 
Concord soon afterward, and has left in her jour- 
nals a brief record of this visit, in which she 
made the grief of her friends her own. We 
gather from its first phrase that Mr. Emerson, 
whom she now speaks of as ** Waldo," had wished 
her to commit to writing some of her reminis- 
cences of the dear one lately departed : — 

" Waldo brought me at once the inkhorn and 
pen. I told him if he kept me so strictly to 
my promise I might lose my ardor ; however, 
I began at once to write for him, but not with 
much success. Lidian came in to see me before 
dinner. She wept for the lost child, and I was 
tempted to do the same, which relieved much 
from the oppression I have felt since I came. 
Waldo showed me all he and others had written 
about the child ; there is very little from Waldo's 
own observation, though he was with him so 
much. He has not much eye for the little signs 
in children that have such great leadings. The 
little there is, is good. 

" ' Mamma, may I have this little bell which 
I have been making, to stand by the side of my 
bed.?' 

" ' Yes, it may stand there.' 



102 MARGARET FULLER. 

" ' But, mamma, I am afraid it will alarm you. 
It may sound in the middle of the night, and it 
will be heard over the whole town. It will sound 
like some great glass thing which will fall down 
and break all to pieces ; it will be louder than 
a thousand hawks ; it will be heard across the 
water and in all the countries, it will be heard 
all over the world.' 

" I like this, because it was exactly so he talked, 
spinning away without end and with large, beau- 
tiful, earnest eyes. But most of the stories are 
of short sayings. 

'' This is good in M. Russell's journal of him. 
She had been telling him a story that excited 
him, and then he told her this : ' How his horse 
went out into a long, long wood, and how he 
looked through a squirrel's eyes and saw a great 
giant, and the giant was himself.' 

" Went to see the Hawthornes ; it was very 
pleasant, the poplars whisper so suddenly their 
pleasant tale, and everywhere the view is so 
peaceful. The house within I like, all their 
things are so expressive of themselves and mix in 
so gracefully with the old furniture. H. walked 
home with me ; we stopped some time to look 
at the moon. She was struggling with clouds. 
He said he should be much more willing to die 
than two months ago, for he had had some real 



VISIT TO CONCORD. 103 

possession in life ; but still he never wished to 
leave this earth, it was beautiful enough. He 
expressed, as he always does, many fine per- 
ceptions. I like to hear the lightest thing he 
says. 

"Waldo and I have good meetings, though we 
stop at all our old places. But my expectations 
are moderate now ; it is his beautiful presence 
that I prize far more than our intercourse. 
He has been reading me his new poems, and the 
other day at the end he asked me how I liked 
the 'Httle subjective twinkle all through.' 

Saturday. Dear Richard has been here a day 
or two, and his common sense and homely affec- 
tion are grateful after these fine people with 
whom I live at sword's points, though for the 
present turned downwards. It is well to ' thee ' 
and * thou ' it after talking with angels and gen- 
iuses. Richard and I spent the afternoon at 
Walden and got a great bunch of flowers. A 
fine thunder-shower gloomed gradually up and 
turned the lake inky black, but no rain came till 
sunset. 

" Sunday. A heavy rain. I must stay at 
home. I feel sad. Mrs. Ripley was here, but I 
only saw her a while in the afternoon and spent 
the day in my room. Sunday I do not give to 
my duty writing, no indeed. I finished yesterday, 



104 MARGARET FULLER. 

after a rest, the article on ballads. Though a 
patchwork thing, it has craved time to do it." 

We come now to the period of the famous 
conversations in which, more fully than in aught 
else, Margaret may be said to have delivered 
her message to the women of her time. The 
novelty of such a departure in the Boston of 
forty years ago may be imagined, and also the 
division of opinion concerning it in those social 
circles which consider themselves as charged with 
the guardianship of the taste of the community. 

Margaret's attitude in view of this undertak- 
ing appears to have been a modest and sensible 
one. She found herself, in the first place, under 
the necessity of earning money for her own sup- 
port and in aid of her family. Her greatest gift, 
as she well knew, was in conversation. Her rare 
eloquence did not much avail her at her desk, 
and though all that she wrote had the value of 
thought and of study, it was in living speech 
alone that her genius made itself entirely felt 
and appreciated. What more natural than that 
she should have proposed to make this rare gift 
available for herself and others } The reasons 
which she herself gives for undertaking the ex- 
periment are so solid and sufficient as to make us 
blush retrospectively for the merriment in which 
the thoughtless world sometimes indulged con- 



CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. 105 

cerning her. Her wish was " to pass in review 
the departments of thought and knowledge, and 
endeavor to place them in due relation to one 
another in our minds ; to systematize thought, 
and give a precision and clearness in which our 
sex are so deficient, chiefly, I think, because 
they have so few inducements to test and classify 
what they receive." In fine, she hoped to be 
able to throw some light upon the momentous 
questions, '* What were we born to do, and how 
shall we do it ? " 

In looking forward to this effort, she saw one 
possible obstacle in " that sort of vanity which 
wears the garb of modesty," and which, she 
thinks, may make some women fear " to lay 
aside the shelter of vague generalities, the art 
of coterie criticism," and the *' delicate disdains 
oi good society,'' even to obtain a nearer view of 
truth itself. "Yet," she says, "as without such 
generous courage nothing of value can be learned 
or done, I hope to see many capable of it." 

The twofold impression which Margaret made 
is to be remarked in this matter of the conversa- 
tions, as elsewhere. Without the fold of her 
admirers stood carping, unkind critics ; within 
were enthusiastic and grateful friends. 

The first meeting of Margaret's Conversation 
Class was held at Miss Peabody's rooms, in West 
Street, Boston, on the 6th of November, 1839. 



I06 MARGARET FULLER. 

Twenty-five ladies were present, who showed 
themselves to be of the elect by their own elec- 
tion of a noble aim. These were all ladies of 
superior position, gathered by a common interest 
from very various belongings of creed and per- 
suasion. At this, their first coming together, 
Margaret prefaced her programme by some re- 
marks on the deficiencies in the education given 
to women, defects which she thought that later 
study, aided by the stimulus of mutual endeavor 
and interchange of thought, might do much to 
remedy. Her opening remarks are as instructive 
to-day as they were when she uttered them : — 

"Women are now taught, at school, all that 
men are. They run over, superficially, even more 
studies, without being really taught anything. 
But with this difference : men are called on, 
from a very early period, to reproduce all that 
they learn. Their college exercises, their politi- 
cal duties, their professional studies, the first 
actions of life in any direction, call on them to 
put to use what they have learned. But women 
learn without any attempt to reproduce. Their 
only reproduction is for purposes of display. It 
is to supply this defect that these conversations 
have been planned." 

Margaret had chosen the Greek Mythology for 
the subject of her first conversations. Her rea- 
sons for this selection are worth remembering : — 



CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. lO/ 

" It is quite separated from all exciting local 
subjects. It is serious without being solemn, 
and without excluding any mode of intellectual 
action ; it is playful as well as deep. It is suffi- 
ciently wide, for it is a complete expression of 
the cultivation of a nation. It is also generally 
known, and associated with all our ideas of the 
arts." 

In considering this statement it is not diffi- 
cult for us^ at this day to read, as people say, 
betv/een the lines. The religious world of Mar- 
garet's youth was agitated by oppositions which 
rent asunder the heart of Christendom. Mar- 
garet wished to lead her pupils beyond all dis- 
cord, into the high and happy unity. Her own 
nature was both fervent and religious, but she 
could not accept intolerance either in belief or 
in disbelief. To study with her friends the ethics 
of an ancient faith, too remote to become the 
occasion of personal excitement, seemed to her 
a step in the direction of freer thought and a 
more unbiassed criticism. The Greek mythol- 
ogy, instinct with the genius of a wonderful 
people, afforded her the desired theme. With 
its help she would introduce her pupils to a 
sphere of serenest contemplation, in which Re- 
ligion and Beauty had become wedded through 
immortal types. 

Margaret was not able to do this without 



I08 MARGARET FULLER. 

awakening some orthodox suspicion. This she 
knew how to allay ; for when one of the class 
demurred at the supposition that a Christian 
nation could have anything to envy in the re- 
ligion of a heathen one, Margaret said that she 
had no desire to go back, and believed we have 
the elements of a deeper civilization ; yet the 
Christian was in its infancy, the Greek in its 
maturity, nor could she look on the expression 
of a great nation's intellect as insignificant. 
These fables of the gods were the result of the 
universal sentiments of religion, aspiration, intel- 
lectual action, of a people whose political and 
aesthetic life had become immortal. 

Margaret's good hopes were justified by the 
success of her undertaking. The value of what 
she had to impart was felt by her class from the 
first. It was not received in a passive and com- 
pliant manner, but with the earnest questioning 
which she had wished to awaken, and which 
she was so well able both to promote and to 
satisfy. 

In the first of her conversations ten of the 
twenty-five persons present took part, and this 
number continued to increase in later meetings. 
Some of these ladies had been bred in the ways 
of liberal thought, some held fast to the formal 
limits of the old theology. The extremes of 
bigotry and scepticism were probably not unrep- 



CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. IO9 

resented among them. From these differences 
and dissidences Margaret was able to combine 
the elements of a wider agreement. A common 
ground of interest was found in the range of 
topics presented by her, and in her manner of 
presenting them. The enlargement of a new 
sympathy was made to modify the intense and 
narrow interests in which women, as a class, are 
apt to abide. 

Margaret's journal and letters to friends give 
some accounts of the first meetings. She finds 
her circle, from the start, devoutly thoughtful, 
and feels herself, not "a paid Corinne," but a 
teacher and a guide. The bright minds respond 
to her appeal, as half-kindled coals glow beneath 
a strong and sudden breath. The present, al- 
v/ays arid if exclusively dwelt in, is enriched by 
the treasures of the past and animated by the 
great hopes of the future. 

Reports from some of Margaret's hearers show 
us how she appeared to them : — 

"All was said with the most captivating ad- 
dress and grace, and with beautiful modesty. 
The position in which she placed herself with 
respect to the rest was entirely lady-hke and 
companionable." 

Another writer finds in the seance " the charm 
of a Platonic dialogue," without pretension or 
pedantry. Margaret, in her chair of leadership. 



no MARGARET FULLER. 

appeared positively beautiful in her intelligent 
enthusiasm. Even her dress was glorified by 
this influence, and is spoken of as sumptuous, 
although it is known to have been characterized 
by no display or attempted effect. 

In Margaret's plan the personages of the 
Greek Olympus were considered as types of 
various aspects of human character, Prom.e- 
theus became the embodiment of pure reason. 
Jupiter stood for active, Juno for passive will, 
the one representing insistence, the other resist- 
ance. Minerva pictured the practical power 
of the intellect. Apollo became the symbol of 
genius, Bacchus that of geniality. Venus was 
instinctive womanhood, and also a type of the 
Beautiful, to the consideration of which four con- 
versations were devoted. In a fifth, Margaret 
related the story of Cupid and Psyche in a man- 
ner which indelibly impressed itself upon the 
minds of her hearers. Other conversations pre- 
sented Neptune as circumstance, Pluto as the 
abyss of the undeveloped. Pan as the glow and 
play of nature, etc. Thus in picturesque guise 
the great questions of life and of character were 
passed in review. A fresh and fearless analysis 
of human conditions showed, as a discovery, the 
grandeur and beauty of man's spiritual inherit- 
ance. All were cheered and upUfted by this 
new outlook, sharing for the time and perhaps 



CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON. Ill 

thenceforth what Mr. Emerson calls " the steady 
elevation of Margaret's aim." 

These occasions, so highly prized and enjoyed, 
sometimes brought to Margaret their penalty in 
the shape of severe nervous headache. During 
one of these attacks a friend expressed anxiety 
lest she should continue to suffer in this way. 
Margaret replied: "I feel just now such a 
separation from pain and illness, such a con- 
sciousness of true life while suffering most, 
that pain has no effect but to steal some of my 
time." 

In accordance with the urgent desire of the 
class the conversations were renewed at the 
beginning of the following winter, Margaret hav- 
ing in the mean time profited by a season of 
especial retirement which was not without influ- 
ence upon her plan of thought and of life. From 
this interval of religious contemplation she re- 
turned to her labors with the feeling of a new 
power. In opening the first meeting of this 
second series, on November 22, 1840, Margaret 
spoke of great changes which had taken place in 
her way of thinking. These were of so deep 
and sacred a character that she could only give 
them a partial expression, which, however, suf- 
ficed to touch her hearers deeply. " They all, 
with glistening eyes, seemed melted into one 
love." Hearts were kindled by her utterance to 



112 MARGARET FULLER. 

one enthusiasm of sympathy which set out of 
sight the possibihty of future estrangement. 

In the conversations of this winter (1840-41) 
the fine arts held a prominent place. 

Margaret stated, at the beginning, that the 
poetry of life would be found in the advance 
"from objects to law, from the circumference of 
being, where we found ourselves at our birth, to 
the centre." This poetry was " the only path of 
the true soul," life's prose being the deviation 
from this ideal way. The fine arts she con- 
sidered a compensation for this prose, which 
appeared to her inevitable. The beauties which 
life could not embody might be expressed in 
stone, upon canvas, or in music and verse. She 
did not permit the search for the beautiful to 
transcend the limits of our social and personal 
duties. The pursuit of aesthetic pleasure might 
lead us to fail in attaining the higher beauty. 
A poetic life was not the life of a dilettante. 

Of sculpture and music she had much to say, 
placing them above all other arts. Painting 
appeared to her inferior to sculpture, because 
it represented a greater variety of objects, and 
thus involved more prose. Several conversa- 
tions were, nevertheless, devoted to Painting, 
and the conclusion was reached that color was 
consecrate to passion and sculpture to thought ; 
while yet in some sculptures, like the Niobe, 



CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON II3 

for example, feeling was recognized, but on a 
grand, universal scale. 

The question, " What is life ? " occupied one 
meeting, and brought out many differences of 
view, which Margaret at last took up into a 
higher ground, beginning with God as the eter- 
nally loving and creating life, and recognizing in 
human nature a kindred power of love and of 
creation, through the exercise of which we also 
add constantly to the total sum of existence, and, 
leaving behind us ignorance and sin, become 
godlike in the ability to give, as well as to 
receive, happiness. 

With the work of this winter was combined 
a series of evening meetings, five in number, to 
which gentlemen were admitted. Mr. Emerson 
was present at the second of these, and reports 
it as having been somewhat encumbered "by the 
headiness or incapacity of the men," who, as 
he observes, had not been trained in Margaret's 
method. 

Another chronicler, for whose truth Mr. Em- 
erson vouches, speaks of the plan of these five 
evenings as a very noble one. They were 
spoken of as Evenings of Mythology, and Mar- 
garet, in devising them, had relied upon the more 
thorough classical education of the gentlemen to 
supplement her own knowledge, acquired in a 
less systematic way.' In this hope she was dis- 



114 MARGARET FULLER. 

appointed. The new-comers did not bring with 
them an erudition equal to hers, nor yet any 
helpful suggestion of ideas. Tlie friend whom 
we now quote is so much impressed by Mar- 
garet's power as to say : " I cannot conceive of 
any species of vanity living in her presence. 
She distances all who talk with her." Even Mr. 
Emerson served only to display her powers, his 
uncompromising idealism seeming narrow and 
hard when contrasted with her glowing realism. 
" She proceeds in her search after the unity of 
things, the divine harmony, not by exclusion, as 
Mr. Emerson does, but by comprehension, and 
so no poorest, saddest spirit but she will lead to 
hope and faith." 

Margaret's classes continued through six win- 
ters. The number of those present varied from 
twenty-five to thirty. In 1841-42 the general 
subject was Ethics, under which head the Fam- 
ily, the School, the Church, Society, and Litera- 
ture were all discussed, and with a special ref- 
erence to "the influences on woman." In the 
winter next after this, we have notes of the fol- 
lowing topics : Is the Ideal first or last, Divina- 
tion or Experience .'' Persons who never awake 
to Life in this World ; Mistakes ; Faith ; Creeds ; 
Woman ; Demonology ; Influence ; Roman Ca- 
tholicism ; The Ideal. 

In the season of 1843-44, a number of themes 



SUMMER ON THE LAKES. II5 

were considered under the general head of Edu- 
cation. Among these were Culture, Ignorance, 
Vanity, Prudence, and Patience. 

These happy labors came to an end in April 
of the year 1844, when Margaret parted from her 
class with many tokens of their love and grati- 
tude. After speaking of affectionate words, 
beautiful gifts, and rare flowers, she says : — 

" How noble has been my experience of such 
relations now for six years, and with so many 
and so various minds ! Life is worth living, is 
it not ? " 

Margaret had answered Mr, Mallock's ques- 
tion before it was asked. 

Margaret's summer on the Lakes was the 
summer of 1843. Her first records of it date 
from Niagara, and give her impressions of the 
wonderful scene, in which the rapids impressed 
her more than the cataract itself, whether seen 
from the American or from the Canadian side. 

" Slowly and thoughtfully I walked down to 
the bridge leading to Goat Island, and when I 
stood upon this frail support, and saw a quarter 
of a mile of tumbling, rushing rapids, and heard 
their everlasting roar, my emotions overpowered 
me. A choking sensation rose to my throat, a 
thrill rushed through my veins, my blood ran 
ripphng to my fingers' ends. This was the cli- 



Il6 MARGARET FULLER. 

max of the effect which the falls produced upon 
me." 

At Buffalo she embarked for a voyage on 
Lake Erie. Making a brief stop at Cleveland, 
the steamer passed on to the St. Clair River. 
The sight of an encampment of Indians on its 
bank gave Margaret her first feeling of what was 
then " the West." 

" The people in the boat were almost all New 
Englanders, seeking their fortunes. They had 
brought with them their cautious manners, their 
love of polemics.. It grieved me to hear Trinity 
and Unity discussed in the poor, narrow, doc- 
trinal way on these free waters. But that will 
soon cease. There is not time for this clash of 
opinions in the West, where the clash of mate- 
rial interests is so noisy. They will need the 
spirit of religion more than ever to guide them, 
but will find less time than before for its doc- 
trine." 

The following passage will show us the spirit 
which Margaret carried into these new scenes : — 

" I came to the West prepared for the distaste 
I must experience at its mushroom growth. I 
know that where * Go ahead ! ' is the motto, the 
village cannot grow into the gentle proportions 
that successive lives and the gradations of ex- 
perience involuntarily give. . . . The march of 
peaceful, is scarcely less wanton than that of war- 



SUMMER ON THE LAKES. II J 

like invention. The old landmarks are broken 
down, and the land, for a season, bears none, ex- 
cept of the rudeness of conquest and the needs 
of the day. I have come prepared to see all 
this, to dislike it, but not with stupid narrowness 
to distrust or defame. On the contrary, I trust 
by reverent faith to woo the mighty meaning of 
the scene, perhaps to foresee the law by which a 
new order, a new poetry, is to be evoked from 
this chaos." 

Charles Dickens's "American Notes" may have 
been in Margaret's mind when she penned these 
lines, and this faith in her may have been quick- 
ened by the perusal of the pages in which he 
showed mostly how 7iot to see a new country. 

Reaching Chicago, she had her first glimpse 
of the prairie, which at first only suggested to 
her " the very desolation of dulness." 

'* After sweeping over the vast monotony of 
the Lakes, to come to this monotony of land, with 
all around a limitless horizon — to walk and walk, 
but never climb ! How the eye greeted the ap- 
proach of a sail or the smoke of a steamboat ; it 
seemed that anything so animated must come 
from a better land, where mountains give re- 
ligion to the scene. But after I had ridden out 
and seen the flowers, and observed the sun set 
with that calmness seen only in the prairies, and 
the cattle winding slowly to their homes in the 



Il8 MARGARET FULLER. 

' island groves,' most peaceful of sights, I began 
to love, because I began to know, the scene, 
and shrank no longer from the encircling vast- 
ness." 

Here followed an excursion of three weeks in 
a strong wagon drawn by a stalwart pair of 
horses, and supplied with all that could be 
needed, as the journey was through Rock River 
valley, beyond the regions of trade and barter. 
Margaret speaks of " a guide equally admirable 
as marshal and companion." This was none other 
than a younger brother of James Freeman Clarke, 
William Hull Clarke by name, a man who then 
and thereafter made Chicago his home, and who 
lived and died an honored and respected citizen. 
This journey with Margaret, in which his own 
sister was of the party, always remained one of 
the poetic recollections of his early life. He had 
suffered much from untoward circumstances, and 
was beginning to lose the elasticity of youth 
under the burden of his discouragements. Mar- 
garet's sympathy divined the depth and delicacy 
of \^^illiam Clarke's character, and her uncon- 
querable spirit lifted him from the abyss of de- 
spondency into a cheerfulness and courage which 
nevermore forsook him. 

Returning to Chicago, Margaret once more 
embarked for lake travel, and her next chapter 
describes Wisconsin, at that time "a Territory, 



SUMMER ON THE LAKES. 1 19 

not yet a State ; still nearer the acorn than we 
were." 

Milwaukee was then a small town, promising, 
as she says, ** to be, some time, a fine one." The 
yellow brick, of which she found it mostly built, 
pleased her, as it has pleased the world since. 
No railroads with mysterious initials served, in 
those days, the needs of that vast region. The 
steamer, arriving once in twenty-four hours, 
brought mails and travellers, and a little stir 
of novelty and excitement. Going a day's jour- 
ney into the adjacent country, Margaret and her 
companions found such accommodation as is 
here mentioned: — 

" The little log-cabin where we slept, with its 
flower-2:arden in front, disturbed the scene no 
more than a lock upon a fair cheek. The hos- 
pitality of that house I may well call princely ; it 
was the boundless hospitality of the heart, which, 
if it has no Aladdin's lamp to create a palace for 
the guest, does him still greater service by the 
freedom of its bounty to the very last drop of 
its powers." 

In the Western immigration Milwaukee was 
already a station of importance. " Here, on the 
pier, I see disembarking the Germans, the Nor- 
wegians, the Swedes, the Swiss. Who knows 
how much of old legendary lore, of modern won- 
der, they have already planted amid the Wiscon- 



120 MARGARET FULLER. 

sin forests? Soon their tales of the origin of 
things, and the Providence that rules them, will 
be so mingled with those of the Indian that the 
very oak-tree will not know them apart, will not 
know whether itself be a Runic, a Druid, or a 
Winnebago oak." 

Margaret reached the island of Mackinaw late 
in August, and found ' it occupied by a large 
representation from the Chippewa and Ottawa 
tribes, who came there to receive their yearly 
pension from the Government at Washington. 
Arriving at night, the steamer fired some rock- 
ets, and Margaret heard with a sinking heart 
the wild cries of the excited Indians, and the 
pants and snorts of the departing steamer. She 
walked "with a stranger to a strange hotel," 
her late companions having gone on with the 
boat. She found such rest as she could in the 
room which served at once as sitting and as 
dining room. The early morning revealed to 
her the beauties of the spot, and with these the 
features of her new neighbors. 

"With the first rosy streak I was out among 
my Indian neighbors, whose lodges honeycombed 
the beautiful beach. They were already on the 
alert, the children creeping out from beneath 
the blanket door of the lodge, the women pound- 
ing corn in their rude mortars, the young men 
playing on their pipes. I had been much amused, 



SUMMER ON THE LAKES. 121 

when the strain proper to the Winnebago court- 
ing flute was played to me on another instru- 
ment, at any one's fancying it a melody. But 
now, when I heard the notes in their true tone 
and time, I thought it not unworthy comparison 
with the sweetest bird-song ; and this, like the 
bird-song, is only practised to allure a mate. 
The Indian, become a citizen and a husband, no 
more thinks of playing the flute than one of the 
settled-down members of our society would of 
choosing the purple light of love as dyestuff for 
a surtout." 

Of the island itself Margaret writes : — 

"It was a scene of ideal loveliness, and these 
wild forms adorned it, as looking so at home in it." 

The Indian encampment was constantly en- 
larged by new arrivals, which Margaret watched 
from the window of her boarding-house. 

** I was never tired of seeing the canoes come 
in, and the new arrivals set up their temporary 
dwellings. The women ran to set up the tent- 
poles and spread the mats on the ground. The 
men brought the chests, kettles, and so on. The 
mats were then laid on the outside, the cedar 
boughs strewed on the ground, the blanket hung 
up for a door, and all was completed in less than 
twenty minutes. Then they began to prepare 
the night meal, and to learn of their neighbors 
the news of the day." 



122 MARGARET FULLER. 

In these days, in which a spasm of conscience 
touches the American heart with a sense of the 
wrongs done to the Indian, Margaret's impres- 
sions concerning our aborigines acquire a fresh 
interest and value. She found them in occupa- 
tion of many places from which they have since 
been driven by what is called the march of civ- 
ilization. We may rather call it a barbarism 
better armed and informed than their own. She 
also found among their white neighbors the in- 
stinctive dislike and repulsion which are familiar 
to us. Here, in Mackinaw, Margaret could not 
consort with them without drawing upon herself 
the censure of her white acquaintances. 

" Indeed, I wonder why they did not give me 
up, as they certainly looked upon me with great 
distaste for it. * Get you gone, you Indian dog!' 
was the felt, if not the breathed, expression 
towards the hapless owners of the soil ; all their 
claims, all their sorrows, quite forgot in abhor- 
rence of their dirt, their tawny skins, and the 
vices the whites have taught them." 

Missionary zeal seems to have been at a stand- 
still just at this time, and the hopelessness of 
converting those heathen to Christianity was 
held to excuse further effort to that end. Mar- 
garet says : — 

" Whether the Indian could, by any efforts of 
love and intelligence, have been civilized and 



SUMMER ON THE LAKES. 1 23 

made a valuable ingredient in the new State, I 
will not say ; but this we are sure of, the French 
Catholics did not harm them, nor disturb their 
minds merely to corrupt them. The French 
they loved. But the stern Presbyterian, with 
his dogmas and his task-work, the city circle 
and the college, with their niggard conceptions 
and unfeeling stare, have never tried the experi- 
ment." 

Margaret naturally felt an especial interest in 
observing the character and condition of the 
Indian vvomen. She says, truly enough, *' The 
observations of women upon the position of 
woman are always more valuable than those 
of men." 

Unhappily, this is a theme in regard to which 
many women make no observation of their own, 
and only repeat what they have heard from men. 

But of Margaret's impressions a few sentences 
will give us some idea: — 

" With the women I held much communica- 
tion by signs. They are almost invariably coarse 
and ugly, with the exception of their eyes, with 
a peculiarly awkward gait, and forms bent by 
burdens. This gait, so different from the steady 
and noble step of the men, marks the inferior 
position they occupy." 

Margaret quotes from Mrs. Schoolcraft and 
from Mrs. Grant passages which assert that this 



124 MARGARET FULLER. 

inferiority does not run through the whole life 
of an Indian woman, and that the drudgery and 
weary service imposed upon them by the men 
are compensated by the esteem and honor in 
which they are held. Still, she says : — 

" Notwithstanding the homage paid to women, 
and the consequence allowed them in some cases, 
it is impossible to look upon the Indian women 
without feeling that they do occupy a lower place 
than women among the nations of European 
civilization. . . . Their decorum and delicacy are 
striking, and show that, where these are native 
to the mind, no habits of life make any differ- 
ence. Their whole gesture is timid, yet self- 
possessed. They used to crowd round me to 
inspect little things I had to show them, but 
never press near ; on the contrary, would reprove 
and keep off the children. Anything they took 
from my hand was held with care, then shut or 
folded, and returned with an air of lady-like pre- 
cision." 

And of the aspect of the Indian question in 
her day Margaret writes : — 

*' I have no hope of liberalizing the missionary, 
of humanizing the sharks of trade, of infusing the 
conscientious drop into the flinty bosom of policy, 
of saving the Indian from immediate degrada- 
tion and speedy death. . . . Yet, let every man 
look to himself how far this blood shall be re- 



SUMMER ON THE LAKES. 1 25 

quired at his hands. Let the missionary, instead 
of preaching to the Indian, preach to the trader 
who ruins him, of the dreadful account which 
will be demanded of the followers of Cain. Let 
every legislator take the subject to heart, and, if 
he cannot undo the effects of past sin, try for 
that clear view and right sense that may save us 
from sinning still more deeply." 

Margaret's days in Mackinaw were nine in 
number. She went thence by steamer to the 
Sault Ste. Marie. On the • way thither, the 
steamer being detained by a fog, its captain 
took her in a small boat to visit the island of 
St. Joseph, and on it, the remains of an old 
English fort. Her comments upon this visit, in 
itself of little interest, are worth quoting : — 

"The captain, though he had been on this 
trip hundreds of times, had never seen this spot, 
and never would but for this fog and his desire to 
entertain me. He presented a striking instance 
how men, for the sake of getting a living, forget 
to live. This is a common fault among the 
active men, the truly living, who could tell what 
life is. It should not be so. Literature should 
not be left to the mere literati, eloquence to the 
mere orator. Every Caesar should be able to 
write his own Commentary. We want a more 
equal, more thorough, more harmonious develop- 
ment, and there is nothing to hinder the men 



126 MARGARET FULLER. 

of this country from it, except their own supine- 
ness or sordid views." 

At the Sault, Margaret found many natural 
beauties, and enjoyed, among other things, the 
descent of the rapids in a canoe. Returning to 
Mackinaw, she was joined by her friends, and 
has further chronicled only her safe return to 
Buffalo. 

The book which preserves the record of this 
journey saw the light at the end of the next 
year's summer. Margaret ends it with a little 
Envoi to the reader. But for us, the best envoi 
will be her own description of the last days of 
its composition : — 

" Every day I rose and attended to the many 
httle calls which are always on me, and which 
have been more of late. Then, about eleven, 
I would sit down to write at my window, close 
to which is the apple-tree, lately full of blossoms, 
and now of yellow-birds. 

" Opposite me was Del Sarto's Madonna ; be- 
hind me, Silenus, holding in his arms the infant 
Pan. I felt very content with my pen, my daily 
bouquet, and my yellow-birds. About five I 
would go out and walk till dark; then would 
arrive my proofs, like crabbed old guardians, 
coming to tea every night. So passed each 
day. The 23d of May, my birthday, about one 
o'clock, I wrote the last line of my little book. 



LAST DAYS IN NEW ENGLAND. 12/ 

Then I went to Mount Auburn, and walked 
gently among the graves." 

And here ends what we have to say about 
Margaret's New England life. From its close 
shelter and intense relations she was now to 
pass into scenes more varied and labors of a 
more general scope. She had become cruelly 
worn by her fatigues in teaching and in writing, 
and in the year 1844 was induced, by liberal 
offers, to accept a permanent position on the staff 
of the '* New York Tribune," then in the hands 
of Messrs. Greeley and McElrath. This step in- 
volved the breaking of home ties, and the dis- 
persion of the household which Margaret had 
done so much to sustain and to keep together. 
Margaret's brothers had now left college, and 
had betaken themselves to the pursuits chosen 
as their life work. Her younger sister was 
married, and it was decided that her mother 
should divide her time among these members 
of her family, leaving Margaret free to begin a 
new season of work under circumstances which 
promised her greater freedom from care and 
from the necessity of unremitting exertion. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

FAREWELL TO BOSTON. ENGAGEMENT TO WRITE FOR 

THE "new YORK TRIBUNE." MARGARET IN HER 

NEW SURROUNDINGS. MR. GREELEY's OPINION OF 

Margaret's work. — her estimate of george 

SAND. 

When Margaret stepped for the last time across 
the threshold of her mother's home, she must 
have had the rare comfort of knowing that she 
had done everything in her power to promote 
the highest welfare of those who, with her, had 
shared its shelter. The children of the house- 
hold had grown up under her fostering care, nor 
had she, in any flight of her vivid imagination, 
forgotten the claims and needs of brothers, sis- 
ter, or mother. So closely, indeed, had she felt 
herself bound by the necessity of doing what was 
best for each and all, that her literary work had 
not, in any degree, corresponded to her own de- 
sires. Her written and spoken word had indeed 
carried with it a quickening power for good ; but 
she had not been able so much as to plan one of 
the greater works which she considered herself 
bound to produce, and which could neither have 



FAREWELL TO BOSTON. I29 

been conceived nor carried out without ample 
command of time and necessary conditions. In 
a letter written to one of her brothers at this 
time, Margaret says : — 

" If our family affairs could now be so arranged 
that I might be tolerably tranquil for the next 
six or eight years, I should go out of life better 
satisfied with the page I have turned in it than 
I shall if I must still toil on. A noble career is 
yet before me, if I can be unimpeded by cares. I 
have given almost all my young energies to per- 
sonal relations ; but at present I feel inclined 
to impel the general stream of thought. Let my 
nearest friends also wish that I should now take 
share in more public life." 

The opening now found for Margaret in New 
York, though fortunate, was by no means fortui- 
tous. She had herself prepared the way there- 
unto by her good work in the '' Dial." In that 
cheerless editorial seat she may sometimes, like 
the Lady of Shalott, have sighed to see Sir 
Lancelot ride careless by, or with the spirit 
of an unrecognized prophet she may have ex- 
claimed, " Who hath believed our report ? " But 
her word had found one who. could hear it to 
some purpose. 

Mr. Greeley had been, from the first, a reader 
of this periodical, and had recognized the fresh 



I30 MARGARET FULLER. 

thought and new culture which gave it character. 
His attention was first drawn to Margaret by an 
essay of hers, published in the July number of 
1843, and entitled "The Great Lawsuit, — Man 
versus Men, Woman versus Women." This 
essay, which at a later date expanded into the 
volume known as *' Woman in the Nineteenth 
Century," struck Mr. Greeley as " the produc- 
tion of an original, vigorous, and earnest mind." 
Margaret's " Summer on the Lakes " appeared 
also in the " Dial" somewhat later, and was con- 
sidered by Mr. Greeley as " unequalled, especially 
in its pictures of the prairies and of the sunnier 
aspects of pioneer life." Convinced of the lit- 
erary ability of the writer, he gave ear to a 
suggestion of Mrs. Greeley, and, in accordance 
with her wishes and with his own judgment, 
extended to her the invitation already spoken 
of as accepted. 

This invitation, and the arrangement to which 
it led, admitted Margaret not only to the columns 
of the " Tribune," but also to the home of its edi- 
tor, in which she continued to reside during the 
period of her connection with the paper. This 
home was in a spacious, old-fashioned house on 
the banks of the East River, completely secluded 
by the adjacent trees and garden, but within 
easy reach of New York by car and omnibus. 
Margaret came there in December, 1844, and 



MARGARET IN NEW YORK. 131 

was at once struck with the beauty of the scene 
and charmed with the aspect of the antiquated 
dwelling, which had once, no doubt, been the 
villa of some magnate of old New York. 

If the outside world of the time troubled itself 
at all about the Greeley household, it must have 
considered it in the light of a happy family of 
eccentrics. Upon the personal peculiarities of 
Mr. Greeley we need not here enlarge. They 
were of little account in comparison with the 
character of the man, who himself deserved the 
name which he gave to his paper, and was at 
heart a tribune of the people. Mrs. Greeley was 
herself a woman of curious theories, and it is 
probable that Margaret, in her new surround- 
ings, found herself obliged in a certain degree 
to represent the conventional side of life, which 
her host and hostess were inclined to disregard. 

By Mr. Greeley's own account there were dif- 
ferences between Margaret and himself regard- 
ing a great variety of subjects, including the use 
of tea and coffee, which he eschewed and to 
which she adhered, and the emancipation of wo- 
men, to which Mr. Greeley proposed to attach, 
as a condition, the abrogation of such small 
courtesies as are shown the sex to-day, while 
Margaret demanded a greater deference as a 
concomitant of the larger liberty. Mr. Greeley 
at first determined to keep beyond the sphere of 



132 MARGARET FULLER, 

Margaret's fascination, and to burn no incense 
at her shrine. She appeared to him somewhat 
spoiled by the " Oriental adoration " which she 
received from other women, themselves persons 
of character and of culture. Her foibles im- 
pressed him as much as did the admirable quali- 
ties which he was forced to recognize in her. 
Vain resolution ! Living under the same roof 
with Margaret, he could not but come to know 
her, and, knowing her, he had no choice but to 
join the throng of her admirers. To him, as 
to others, the blemishes at first discerned " took 
on new and brighter aspects in the light of her 
radiant and lofty soul." 

"I learned," says Mr. Greeley, ''to know her 
as a most fearless and unselfish champion of 
truth and human good at all hazards, ready to 
be their standard-bearer through danger and 
obloquy, and, if need be, their martyr." 

Mr. Greeley bears witness also to the fact that 
this ready spirit of self-sacrifice in Margaret did 
not spring either from any asceticism of tem- 
perament or from an undervaluation of material 
advantages. Margaret, he thinks, appreciated 
fully all that riches, rank, and luxury could give. 
She prized all of these in their place, but prized 
far above them all the opportunity to serve and 
help her fellow-creatures. 

The imperative drill of press-work was new 



GREELEY'S OPINION OF HER WORK. 133 

and somewhat irksome to her. She was accus- 
tomed indeed to labor in season and out of sea- 
son, and in so doing to struggle with bodily pain 
and weariness. But to take up the pen at the 
word of command, without the interior bidding 
of the divine afflatus, was a new necessity, and 
one to which she found it difficult to submit. 
Mr. Greeley prized her work highly, though with 
some drawbacks. He could not always com- 
mand it at will, for the reason that she could 
not. He found her writing, however, terse, vigo- 
rous, and practical, and considered her contri- 
butions to the " Tribune " more solid in merit, 
though less ambitious in scope, than her essays 
written earlier for the " Dial." Margaret herself 
esteemed them but moderately, feeling that she 
had taken up this new work at a time when her 
tired faculties needed rest and recreation. 

In a brief memorial of Margaret, Mr. Greeley 
gives us the titles of the most important of these 
papers. They are as follows : " Thomas Hood," 
" Edgar A. Poe," " Capital Punishment," " Cas- 
sius M. Clay," "New Year's Day," " Christmas," 
*' Thanksgiving," " St. Valentine's," " Fourth of 
July," "The First of August" — which she com- 
memorates as the anniversary of slave-emanci- 
pation in the British West Indies. 

In looking over the volumes which contain 
these and many others of Margaret's collected 



134 MARGARET FULLER, 

papers, we are carried back to a time in which 
issues now long settled were in the early stages 
of their agitation, and in which many of those 
whom we now most revere in memory were liv- 
ing actors on the stage of the century's life. 
Hawthorne and Longfellow were then young 
writers. The second series of Mr. Emerson's 
" Essays" is noticed as of recent publication. At 
the time of her writing, it would seem that Mr. 
Emerson had a larger circle of readers in England 
than in his own country. She accounts for this 
on the ground that " our people, heated by a parti- 
san spirit, necessarily occupied in these first stages 
by bringing out the material resources of the 
land, not generally prepared by early training for 
the enjoyment of books that require attention 
and reflection, are still more injured by a large 
majority of writers and speakers who lend all 
their efforts to flatter corrupt tastes and mental 
indolence." She permits us, however, to " hail 
as an auspicious omen the influence Mr. Emer- 
son has obtained " in New England, which she 
recognizes as deep-rooted, and, over the younger 
part of the community, far greater than that of 
any other person. She is glad to introduce Robert 
Browning as the author of " Bells and Pome- 
granates" to the American public. Mrs. Brown- 
ing was then Miss Barrett, in regard of whom 
Margaret rejoices that her task is " mainly to 



ESTIMATE OF GEORGE SAND. 135 

express a cordial admiration ! " and says that she 
" cannot hesitate to rank her, in vigor and noble- 
ness of conception, depth of spiritual experience, 
and command of classic allusion, above any- 
female writer the world has yet known." In 
those poems of hers which emulate Milton and 
Dante *' her success is far below what we find in 
the poems of feeling and experience ; for she has 
the vision of a great poet, but little in proportion 
of his classic power." 

Margaret has much to say concerning George 
Sand, and under various heads. In her work 
on Woman, she gives the rationale of her strange 
and anomalous appearance, and is at once very 
just and very tender in her judgments. 

George Sand was then in the full bloom of her 
reputation. The light and the shade of her char- 
acter, as known to the public, were at the height 
of their contrast. To the literary merit of her 
work was added the interest of a mysterious 
personality, which rebelled against the limits of 
sex, and, not content to be either man or woman, 
touched with a new and strange protest the im- 
agination of the time. 

The inexorable progress of events has changed 
this, with so much else. Youth, beauty, sex, all 
imperial in their day, are discrowned by the 
dusty hand of Time, and ranged in the gallery 
of the things that were. George Sand's volumes 



^ 



136 MARGARET FULLER. 

still glow and sparkle on the bookshelf ; but 
George Sand's personality and her passions are 
dim visions of the past, and touch us no longer. 
When Margaret wrote of her, the woman was 
at the zenith of her power, and the intoxication 
of her influence was so great that a calm judgment 
concerning it was difficult. Like a wild Bac- 
chante, she led her chorus of bold spirits through 
the formal ways of French society, which in her 
view were bristling with pruriency and veiled with 
hypocrisy. Like Margaret's, her cry was, " Truth 
at all hazards!" But hers was not the ideal 
truth which Margaret followed so zealously. 
** So vile are men, so weak are women, so ruth- 
less is passion," were the utterances of her sin- 
cerity. Mistress of the revels, she did indeed 
command a new unmasking at the banquet, 
thoughtless of the risk of profaning innocent 
imaginations with sad facts which they had no 
need to know, and which, shown by such a master 
of art and expression, might bear with them the 
danger fabled in the mingled beauty and horror 
of the Gorgon's head. 

George Sand was saved by the sincerity of her 
intention. Her somnambulic utterances had told 
of her good faith, and of her belief in things truly 
human and divine. Her revolutionary indignation 
was against the really false and base, and her pro- 
gress was to a position from which she was able 



ESTIMATE OF GEORGE SAND. 137 

calmly to analyze and loftily to repudiate the dis- 
orders in which she was supposed to have lost 
for a time the sustaining power of reason and 
self-command. 

To those of us who remember these things in 
the vividness of their living presence, it is most 
satisfactory to be assured of the excellence of 
Margaret's judgment. The great Frenchwo- 
man, at the period of which we write, appeared 
to many the incarnation of all the evil which her 
sex could represent. To those of opposite mind 
she appeared the inspired prophetess of a new 
er^ of thought and of sentiment. To Margaret 
she was neither the one nor the other. Much as 
she loved genius, that of George Sand could not 
blind her to the faults and falsities that marred 
her work. Stern idealist as she was, the most 
objectionable part of Madame Sand's record 
could not move her to a moment's injustice or 
uncharity in her regard. 

In " Woman in the Nineteenth Century " Mar- 
garet says : — 

" George Sand smokes, wears male attire, 
wishes to be addressed as moji frere. Perhaps, 
if she found those who were as brothers indeed, 
she would not care whether she were brother or 
sister." 

And concerning her writings : — 

"This author, beginning like the many in asr 



138 MARGARET FULLER. 

sault upon bad institutions and external ills, yet 
deepening the experience through comparative 
freedom, sees at last that the only efficient rem- 
edy must come from individual character. 

" The mind of the age struggles confusedly 
with these problems, better discerning as yet the 
ill it can no longer bear than the good by which 
it may supersede it. But women like Sand will 
speak now, and cannot be silenced ; their char- 
acters and their eloquence alike foretell an era 
when such as they shall easier learn to lead true 
lives. But though such forebode, not such shall 
be parents of it. Those who would reform the 
world must show that they do not speak in the 
heat of wild impulse ; their lives must be un- 
stained by passionate error. They must be reli- 
gious students of the Divine purpose with regard 
to man, if they would not confound the fancies 
of a day with the requisitions of eternal good." 

So much for the woman Sand, as known to 
Margaret through her works and by hearsay. 
Of the writer she first knew through her '* Seven 
Strings of the Lyre," a rhapsodic sketch. Mar- 
garet prizes in this " the knowledge of the pas- 
sions and of social institutions, with the celeetial 
choice which was above them." In the romances 
** Andre" and "Jacques" she traces "the same 
high morality of one who had tried the liberty 
of circumstance only to learn to appreciate the 



ESTIMATE OF GEORGE SAND. 139 

liberty of law. . . . Though the sophistry of 
passion in these books disgusted me, flowers of 
purest hue seemed to grow upon the dark and 
dirty ground. I thought she had cast aside the 
slough of her past life, and begun a new existence 
beneath the sun of a new ideal." The " Lettres 
d'un Voyageur " seem to Margaret shallow, — 
the work of "a frail woman mourning over her 
lot." But when " Consuelo " appears, she feels 
herself strengthened in her first interpretation 
of George Sand's true character, and takes her 
stand upon the " original nobleness and love of 
right" which even the wild impulses of her fiery 
blood were never able entirely to oversweep. Of 
the work itself she says : — 

"To many women this picture will prove a 
true consuelo (consolation), and we think even 
very prejudiced men will not read it without 
being charmed with the expansion, sweetness, 
and genuine force of a female character such 
as they have not met, but must, when painted, 
recognize as possible, and may be led to review 
their opinions, and perhaps to elevate and enlarge 
their hopes, as to ' woman's sphere ' and ' wo- 
man's mission.' " 



CHAPTER IX. 

Margaret's residence at the greeley mansion. 

appearance in new YORK SOCIETY. VISITS TO 

women imprisoned at sing sing and on black- 
well's ISLAND. letters TO HER BROTHERS. 

"woman in THE NINETEENTH CENTURY." ESSAY 

ON AMERICAN LITERATURE. — VIEW OF CONTEMPO- 
RARY AUTHORS. 

We have no very full record of Margaret's life 
beneath the roof of the Greeley mansion. The 
information that we can gather concerning it 
seems to indicate that it was, on the whole, a 
period of rest and of enlargement. True, her 
task-work continued without intermission, and 
her incitements to exertion were not fewer than 
in the past. But the change of scene and of 
occupation gives refreshment, if not repose, to 
minds of such activity, and Margaret, accus- 
tomed to the burden of constant care and anxi- 
ety, was now relieved from much of this. She 
relied much, and with reason, both upon Mr. 
Greeley's judgment and upon his friendship. 
The following extract from a letter to her 



AT THE GREELEY MANSION. 141 

brother Eugene gives us an inkling as to her 
first impressions : — 

" The place where we live is old and dilapi- 
dated, but in a situation of great natural love- 
liness. When there I am perfectly secluded, 
yet every one I wish to see comes to see me, 
and I can get to the centre of the city in half 
an hour. Here is all affection for me and de- 
sire to make me at home ; and I do feel so, 
which could scarcely have been expected from 
such an arrangement. My room is delightful ; 
how I wish you conld sit at its window with me, 
and see the sails glide by ! 

" As to the public part, that is entirely satis- 
factory. I do just as I please, and as much and 
as little as I please, and the editors express 
themselves perfectly satisfied, and others say 
that my pieces te/l to a degree I could not 
expect. I think, too, I shall do better and bet- 
ter. I am truly interested in this great field 
which opens before me, and it is pleasant to be 
sure of a chance at half a hundred thousand 
readers." 

The enlargement spoken of above was found 
by Margaret in her more varied field of literary 
action, and in the society of a city which had, 
even at that date, a cosmopolitan, semi-European 
character. 

New York has always, with a little grumbling, 



142 MARGARET FULLER. 

conceded to Boston the palm of literary prece- 
dence. In spite of this, there has always been 
a good degree of friendly intercourse among its 
busy litterateurs and artists, who find, in the 
more vivid movement and wider market of the 
larger city, a compensation, if not an equivalent, 
for its distance from the recognized centres of 
intellectual influence. 

In these circles Margaret was not only a wel- 
come, but a desired guest. In the salons of the 
time she had the position of a celebrity. Here, 
as elsewhere, her twofold nragnetism strongly 
attracted some and repelled others. Somewhat 
hypercritical and pedantic she was judged to be 
by those who observed her at a distance, or 
heard from her only a chance remark. Such an 
observer, admiring but not approaching, saw at 
times the look of the sibyl flash from beneath 
Margaret's heavy eyelids ; and once, hearing 
her sigh deeply after a social evening, was moved 
to ask her why. " Alone, as usual ! " was Mar- 
garet's answer, with one or two pathetic words, 
the remembrance of which brought tears to 
the eyes of the person to whom they were 
spoken. 

In these days she wrote in her journal : — 
"There comes a consciousness that I have no 
real hold on life, — no real, permanent connec- 
tion with any soul. I seem a wandering Intel- 



VISITS TO PRISONERS. I43 

ligence, driven from spot to spot, that I may 
learn all secrets, and fulfil a circle of knowl- 
edge. This thought envelops me as a cold 
atmosphere." 

From this chill isolation of feeling Margaret 
v^^as sometimes relieved by the warm apprecia- 
tion of those whom she had truly found, of 
whom one could say to her : " You come like 
one of the great powers of nature, harmonizing 
with all beauty of the soul or of the earth. You 
cannot be discordant with anything that is true 
or deep." 

Other neighbors, and of a very different char- 
acter, had Margaret in her new surroundings. 
The prisons at Blackwell's Island were on the 
opposite side of the river, at a distance easily 
reached by boat. Sing Sing prison was not far 
off ; and Margaret accepted the invitation to 
pass a Sunday within its walls. She had con- 
sorted hitherto with the e/iU of her sex, the 
women attracted to her having invariably been 
of a superior type. She now made acquaintance 
with the outcasts in whom the elements of 
womanhood are scarcely recognized. For both 
she had one gospel, that of high hope and 
divine love. She seems to have found herself 
as much at home in the office of encouraging 
the fallen, as she had been when it was her duty 
to arouse the best spirit in women sheltered 



144 MARGARET FULLER. 

from the knowledge and experience of evil by 
every favoring circumstance. 

This was in the days in which Judge Edmonds 
had taken great interest in the affairs of the 
prison. Mrs. Farnum, a woman of uncommon 
character and ability, had charge of the female 
prisoners, who already showed the results of her 
intelligent and kindly treatment. On the occa- 
sion of her first visit, Margaret spoke with only 
a few of the women, and says that "the inter- 
view was very pleasant. These women were all 
from the lowest haunts of vice, yet nothing 
could have been more decorous than their con- 
duct, while it was also frank. All passed, in- 
deed, miLch as in one of my Boston class esT 

This last phrase may somewhat startle us ; 
but it should only assure us that Margaret had 
found, in confronting two circles so widely dis- 
similar, the happy words which could bring high 
and low into harmony with the true divine. 

Margaret's second visit to the prison was on 
the Christmas soon following. She was invited 
to address the women in their chapel, and has 
herself preserved some record of her discourse, 
which was extemporaneous. Seated at the desk, 
no longer with the critical air which repelled the 
timid, but deeply penetrated by the pathos of 
the occasion, she began with the words, "To 
me the pleasant office has been given of wishing 



VISITS TO PRISONERS. 145 

you a happy Christmas." And the sad assem- 
bly smiled, murmuring its thanks. ■ What a 
Christ-like power was that which brought this 
sun-gleam of a smile into that dark tragedy of 
offence and punishment ! 

Some passages of this address must be given 
here, to show the attitude in which this truly 
noble woman confronted the most degraded of 
her sex. After alluding to the common opin- 
ion that "women once lost are far worse than 
abandoned men, and cannot be restored," she 
said : — 

" It is not so. I know my sex better. It is 
because women have so much feeling, and such 
a rooted respect for purity, that they seem so 
shameless and insolent when they feel that they 
have erred, and that others think ill of them. 
When they meet man's look of scorn, the des- 
perate passion that rises is a perverted pride, 
which might have been their guardian angel. 
Rather let me say, which may be ; for the 
rapid improvement wrought here gives us warm 
hopes." 

Margaret exhorts the prisoners not to be im- 
patient for their release. She dwells upon their 
weakness, the temptations of the outer world, 
and the helpful character of the influences which 
are now brought to bear upon them. 

" Oh, be sure that you are fitted to triumph 



146 MARGARET FULLER. 

over evil before you again expose yourselves to 
it ! Instead of wasting your time and strength 
in vain wishes, use this opportunity to prepare 
yourselves for a better course of life when you 
are set free." 

The following sentences are also noteworthy: 
" Let me warn you earnestly against acting 
insincerely. I know you must prize the good 
opinion of your friendly protectors, but do not 
buy it at the cost of truth. Try to be, not to 
seem. . . . Never despond, — never say, * It is too 
late ! ' Fear not, even if you relapse again and 
again. If you fall, do not lie grovelling, but rise 
upon your feet once more, and struggle bravely 
on. And if aroused conscience makes you suffer 
keenly, have patience to bear it. God will not 
let you suffer more than you need to fit you for 
his grace. . . . Cultivate this spirit of prayer. I 
do not mean agitation and excitement, but a deep 
desire for truth, purity, and goodness." 

Margaret visited also the prisons on Black- 
well's Island, and, walking through the women's 
hospital, shed the balm of her presence upon the 
most hardened of its wretched inmates. She 
had always wished to have a better understand- 
ing of the feelings and needs of "those women 
who are trampled in the mud to gratify the brute 
appetites of men," in order to lend them a help- 
ing hand. 



LETTERS TO HER BROTHERS. 147 

The following extracts from letters, hitherto 
in great part unpublished, will give the reader 
some idea of Margaret's tender love and care for 
the dear ones from whom she was now sepa- 
rated. The letters are mostly addressed to her 
younger brother, Richard, and are dated in vari- 
ous epochs of the year 1845. One of these re- 
calls her last impressions in leaving Boston : — 

" The last face I saw in Boston was Anna 
Loring's, looking after me from Dr. Peabody's 
steps. Mrs. Peabody stood behind her, some 
way up, nodding adieux to the ' darling,' as she 
addressed me, somewhat to my emotion. They 
seemed like a frosty November afternoon and a 
soft summer twilight, when night's glorious star 
begins to shine. 

" When you go to Mrs. Loring's, will you ask 
W. Story if he has any of Robert Browning's 
poems to lend me for a short time .-^ They shall 
be returned safe. I only want them a few days, 
to make some extracts for the paper. They can- 
not be obtained here." 

The following extracts refer to the first ap- 
pearance of her book, ''Woman in the Nine- 
teenth Century." Her brother Eugene had 
found a notice of it in some remote spot. She 
writes : — 

"It was pleasant you should see that little 
notice in that wild place. The book is out, and 



148 MARGARET FULLER. 

the theme of all the newspapers and many of 
the journals. Abuse, public and private, is lav- 
ished upon its views, but respect is expressed 
for me personally. But the most speaking fact, 
and the one which satisfied me, is, that the 
whole edition was sold off in a week to the 
booksellers, and eighty-five dollars handed to 
me as my share. Not that my object was in 
any wise money, but I consider this the sig- 
net of success. If one can be heard, that is 
enough." 

In August, 1845, she writes thus to Richard : 
" I really loathe my pen at present ; it is en- 
tirely unnatural to me to keep at it so in the 
summer. Looking at these dull blacks and 
whites so much, when nature is in her bright 
colors, is a source of great physical weariness 
and irritation. I cannot, therefore, write you 
good letters, but am always glad to get them. 

" As to what you say of my writing books, 
that cannot be at present. I have not health 
and energy to do so many things, and find too 
much that I value in my present position to 
give it up rashly or suddenly. But doubt not, 
as I do not, that Heaven has good things enough 
for me to do, and that I shall find them best by 
not exhausting or overstraining myself." 

To Richard she writes, some months later : — 
" I have to-day the unexpected pleasure of 



LETTERS TO HER BROTHERS. 1 49 

receiving from England a neat copy of ' Woman 
in the Nineteenth Century,' republished there in 
Clark's ' Cabinet Library.' I had never heard a 
word about it from England, and am very glad 
to find it will be read by women there. As to 
advantage to me, the republication will bring me 
no money, but will be of use to me here, as our 
dear country folks look anxiously for verdicts 
from the other side of the water. 

" I shall get out a second edition before long, 
I hope ; and wish you would translate for me, 
and send those other parts of the story of * Pan- 
thea' you thought I might like." 

The extract subjoined will show Margaret's 
anxious thought concerning her mother's com- 
fort and welfare. It is addressed to the same 
brother, whom she thus admonishes : — 

" She speaks of you most affectionately, but 
happened to mention that you took now no in- 
terest in a garden. I have known you woul'd do 
what you thought of to be a good son, and not 
neglect your positive duties; but I have feared 
you would not show enough of sympathy with 
her tastes and pursuits. Care of the garden 
is a way in which you could give her genuine 
comfort and pleasure, while regular exercise in 
it would be of great use to yourself. Do not 
neglect this nor any the most trifling attention 
she may wish ; because it is not by attending to 



ISO MARGARET FULLER. 

our friends in our way, but in theirs, that we 
can really avail them. I think of you much with 
love and pride and hope for your public and 
private life." 

Margaret's preface to " Woman in the Nine- 
teenth Century" bears the date of November, 
1844. The greater part of the work, as has 
already been said, had appeared in the " Dial," 
under a different title, for which she in this 
place expresses a preference, as better suited to 
the theme she proposes to treat of. "Man versus 
Men, Woman versus Women," means to her the 
leading idea and ideal of humanity, as wronged 
and hindered from development by the thought- 
less and ignorant action of the race itself. The 
title finally given was adopted in accordance 
with the wishes of friends, who thought the 
other wanting in clearness. " By man, I mean 
both man and woman : these are the two halves 
of one thought. I lay no especial stress on the 
welfare of either. I believe that the develop- 
ment of the one cannot be effected without that 
of the other." 

In the name of a common humanity, then, 
Margaret solicits from her readers " a sincere 
and patient attention," praying women particu- 
larly to study for themselves the freedom which 
the law should secure to them. It is this that 



<' WOMAN IN THE 19 TH CENTURY:' 151 

she seeks, not to be replaced by " the largest 
extension of partial privileges." 

** And may truth, unpolluted by prejudice, 
vanity, or selfishness, be granted daily more 
and more, as the due inheritance and only val- 
uable conquest for us all I " 

The leading thought formulated by Margaret 
in the title of her preference is scarcely carried 
out in her work ; at least, not with any system- 
atic parallelism. Her study of the position and 
possibilities of woman is not the less one of 
unique value and interest. The work shows 
throughout the grasp and mastery of her mind. 
Her faith in principles, her reliance upon them 
in the interpretation of events, make her strong 
and bold. We do not find in this book one 
careless expression which would slur over the 
smallest detail of womanly duty, or absolve from 
the attainment of any or all of the feminine 
graces. Of these, Margaret deeply knows the 
value. But, in her view, these duties will never 
be noble, these graces sincere, until women 
stand as firmly as men do upon the ground of 
individual freedom and legal justice. 

*' If principles could be established, particulars 
would adjust themselves aright. Ascertain the 
true destiny of woman ; give her legitimate 
hopes, and a standard within herself. . . . What 
woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, 



152 MARGARET FULLER. 

but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to dis- 
cern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded." 

She would have " every arbitrary barrier 
thrown down, every path laid open to woman 
as freely as to man." And she insists that this 
" inward and outward freedom shall be acknowl- 
edged as a righty not yielded as a concession." 

The limits of our present undertaking do not 
allow us to give here an extended notice of this 
work, which has long belonged to general litera- 
ture, and is, perhaps, the most widely known of 
Margaret's writings. We must, however, dwell 
sufficiently upon its merits to commend it to 
the men and women of to-day, as equally inter- 
esting to both, and as entirely appropriate to the 
standpoint of the present time. 

Nothing that has been written or said, in 
later days, has made its teaching superfluous. 
It demands all that is asked to-day for women, 
and that on the broadest and most substantial 
ground. The usual arguments against the eman- 
cipation of women from a position of political 
and social inferiority are all carefully considered 
and carefully answered. Much study is shown of 
the prominent women of history, and of the con- 
dition of the sex at different periods. Much un- 
derstanding also of the ideal womanhood, which 
has always had its place in the van of human 
progress, and of the actual womanhood, which 



''WOMAN IN THE 19 TH CENTURY:' 1 53 

has mostly been bred and trained in an opposite 
direction. 

We have, then, in the book, a thorough state- 
ment, both of the shortcomings of women them- 
selves, and of the wrongs which they in turn 
suffer from society. The cause of the weak 
against the strong is advanced with sound and 
rational argument. We will not say that a 
thoughtful reader of to-day will indorse every 
word of this remarkable treatise. Its fervor 
here and there runs into vague enthusiasm, and 
much is asserted about souls and their future 
which thinkers of the present day do not so 
confidently assume to know. 

The extent of Margaret's reading is shown in 
her command of historical and mythical illus- 
tration. Her beloved Greeks furnish her with 
some portraits of ideal men in relation with ideal 
women. As becomes a champion, she knows 
the friends and the enemies of the cause which 
she makes her own. Here, for example, is a 
fine discrimination : — 

" The spiritual tendency is toward the eleva- 
tion of woman, but the intellectual, by itself, is 
not so. Plato sometimes seems penetrated by 
that high idea of love which considers man and 
woman as the twofold expression of one thought. 
But then again Plato, the man of intellect, treats 
woman in the republic as property, and in the 



154 MARGARET FULLER. 

" Timaeus " says that man, if he misuse the privi- 
leges of one hfe, shall be degraded into the form 
of a woman." 

Margaret mentions among the women whom 
she considered helpers and favorers of the new 
womanhood, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Jameson, 
and our own Miss Sedgwick. Among the 
writers of the other sex, whose theories point 
to the same end, she speaks of Swedenborg, 
Fourier, and Goethe. The first-named comes to 
this through his mystical appreciation of spirit- 
ual life ; the second, by his systematic distri- 
bution of gifts and opportunities according to 
the principles of ideal justice. The world-wise 
Goethe everywhere recognizes the presence and 
significance of the feminine principle ; and, after 
treating with tenderness and reverence its frail- 
est as well as its finest impersonations, lays the 
seal of all attraction in the lap of the " etern^ 
womanly." 

Nearer at hand, and in the intimacy of per- 
sonal intercourse, Margaret found a noble friend 
to her cause. 

" The late Dr. Channing, whose enlarged and 
religious nature shared every onward impulse of 
his time, though his thoughts followed his wishes 
with a deliberative caution which belonged to 
his habits and temperament, was greatly inter- 
ested in these expectations for women. He 



''WOMAN IN THE 19 TH CENTUliYy 1 55 

regarded them as souls, each of which had a 
destiny of its own, incalculable to other minds, 
and whose leading it must follow, guided by the 
light of a private conscience." 

She tells us that the Doctor's delicate and 
fastidious taste was not shocked by Angelina 
Grimkes appearance in public, and that he 
fully indorsed Mrs. Jameson's defence of her 
sex " in a way from which women usually 
shrink, because, if they express themselves on 
such subjects with sufficient force and clearness 
to do any good, they are exposed to assaults 
whose vulgarity makes them painful." 

Margaret ends her treatise with a synopsis of 
her humanitarian creed, of which we can here 
give only enough to show its general scope and 
tenor. Here is the substance of it, mostly in her 
own words : — 

Man is a being of twofold relations, — to na- 
ture beneath and intelligences above him. The 
earth is his school, God his object, life and 
thought his means of attaining it. 

The growth of man is twofold, — masculine 
and feminine. These terms, for Margaret, rep- 
resent other qualities, to wit. Energy and Har- 
mony, Power and Beauty, Intellect and Love. 

These faculties belong to both sexes, yet the 
two are distinguished by the preponderance of 
the opposing characteristics. 



156 MARGARET FULLER. 

Were these opposites in perfect harmony, they 
would respond to and complete each other. 

Why does this harmony not prevail ? 

Because, as man came before woman, power 
before beauty, he kept his ascendency, and en- 
slaved her. 

Woman in turn rose by her moral power, 
which a growing civilization recognized. 

Man became more just and kind, but failed to 
see that woman was half himself, and that, by 
the laws of their common being, he could never 
reach his true proportions while she remained 
shorn of hers. And so it has gone on to our day. 

Pure love, poetic genius, and true religion 
have done much to vindicate and to restore the 
normal harmony. 

The time has now come when a clearer vision 
and better action are possible, — when man and 
woman may stand as pillars of one temple, 
priests of one worship. 

This hope should attain its amplest fruition 
in our own country, and will do so if the prin- 
ciples from which sprang our national life are 
adhered to. 

Women should now be the best helpers of 
women. Of men, we need only ask the removal 
of arbitrary barriers. 

The question naturally suggests itself, What 
use will woman make of her liberty after so many 
ages of restraint } 



''WOMAN IN THE 19TH CENTURY:' 15/ 

Margaret says, in answer, that this freedom 
will not be immediately given. But, even if it 
were to come suddenly, she finds in her own 
sex " a reverence for decorums and limits inher- 
ited and enhanced from generation to genera- 
tion, which years of other life could not efface." 
She believes, also, that woman as woman is 
characterized by a native love of proportion, — 
a Greek moderation, — which would immedi- 
ately create a restraining party, and would grad- 
ually establish such rules as are needed to guard 
life without impeding it. 

This opinion of Margaret's is in direct contra- 
diction to one very generally held to-day, namely, 
that women tend more to extremes than men 
do, and are often seen to exaggerate to irrational 
frenzy the feelings which agitate the male por- 
tion of the community. The reason for this, if 
honestly sought, can. easily be found. Women 
in whom the power of individual judgment has 
been either left without training or forcibly sup- 
pressed will naturally be led by impulse and 
enthusiasm, and will be almost certain to in- 
flame still further the kindled passions of the 
men to whom they stand related. Margaret 
knew this well enough ; but she had also known 
women of a very different type, who had trained 
and disciplined themselves by the help of that 
nice sense of measure which belongs to any 



158 MARGARET FULLER. 

normal human intelligence, and which, in wo- 
men, is easily reached and rendered active. It 
was upon this best and wisest womanhood that 
Margaret relied for the standard which should 
redeem the sex from violence and headlong ex- 
citement. Here, as elsewhere, she shows her 
faith in the good elements of human nature, and 
sees them, in her prophetic vision, as already 
crowned with an enduring victory. 

'* I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects 
no longer glitter in the dews of morning, nei- 
ther are yet softened by the shadows of even- 
ing. Every spot is seen, every chasm revealed. 
Climbing the dusty hill, some fair effigies that 
once stood for human destiny have been broken. 
Yet enough is left to point distinctly to the glo- 
ries of that destiny." 

Margaret gives us, as the end of the whole 
matter, this sentence: — 

"Always the soul says to us all. Cherish your 
best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in ac- 
tion. . . . Such shall be the effectual fervent 
means to their fulfilment." 

In this sunny noon of life things new and 
strange were awaiting Margaret. Her days 
among kindred and country-people were nearly 
ended. The last volume given by her to the 
American public was entitled " Papers on Art 
and Literature." Of these, a number had al- 



ESSAY ON AMERICAN LITERATURE. 1 59 

ready appeared in print. In her preface she 
mentions the essay on " American Literature " 
as one now pubhshed for the first time, and also 
as " a very imperfect sketch," which she hopes 
to complete by some later utterance. She com- 
mends it to us, however, as " written with sin- 
cere and earnest feelings, and from a mind that 
cares for nothing but what is permanent and 
essential." She thinks it should, therefore, have 
" some merit, if only in the power of sugges- 
tion." It has for us the great interest of mak- 
ing known Margaret's opinion of her compeers 
in literature, and with her appreciation of these, 
not always just or adequate, her views of the 
noble national life to which American literature, 
in its maturer growth, should give expression. 

Margaret says, at the outset, that " some 
thinkers " may accuse her of writing about a 
thing that does not exist. "For," says she, "it 
does not follow, because many books are written 
by persons born in America, that there exists 
an American literature. Books which imitate 
or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do 
not constitute an American literature. Before 
such can exist, an original idea must animate 
this nation, and fresh currents of life must call 
into life fresh thoughts along its shores." 

In reviewing these first sentences, we are led 
to say that they partly commend themselves to 



l60 MARGARET FULLER. 

our judgment, and partly do not. Here, as in 
much that Margaret has written, a soUd truth is 
found side by side with an illusion. The state- 
ment that an American idea should lie at the 
foundation of our national life and its expres- 
sion is a truth too often lost sight of by those to 
whom it most imports. On the other hand, the 
great body of the world's literature is like an 
ocean in whose waves and tides there is a con- 
tinuity which sets at naught the imposition of 
definite limits. Literature is first of all human ; 
and American books, which express human 
thought, feeling, and experience, are American 
literature, even if they show no distinctive na- 
tional feature. 

In what follows, Margaret confesses that her 
own studies have been largely of the classics 
of foreign countries. She has found, she says, 
a model " in the simple masculine minds of the 
great Latin authors." She has observed, too, 
the features of kindred between the character 
of the ancient Roman and that of the Briton of 
to-day. 

She remarks upon the reaction which was felt 
in her time against the revolutionary opposition 
to the mother country. This reaction, she feels, 
may be carried too far. 

" What suits Great Britain, with her insular 
position and consequent need to concentrate 



ESSAY ON AMERICAN LITERATURE. l6l 

and intensify her life, her limited monarchy and 
spirit of trade, does not suit a mixed race, con- 
tinually enriched (?) with new blood from other 
stocks the most unlike that of our first descent, 
with ample field and verge enough to range in 
and leave every impulse free, and abundant op- 
portunity to develop a genius wide and full as 
our rivers, luxuriant and impassioned as our 
vast prairies, rooted in strength as the rocks on 
which the Puritan fathers landed." 

Margaret anticipates for this Western hemi- 
sphere the rise and development of such a 
genius, but says that this cannot come until 
the fusion of races shall be more advanced, nor 
"until this nation shall attain sufficient moral 
and intellectual dignity to prize moral and intel- 
lectual no less highly than political freedom." 

She finds the earnest of this greater time 
in the movements already leading to social re- 
forms, and in the " stern sincerity " of elect indi- 
viduals, but thinks that the influences at work 
" must go deeper before we can have poets." 

At the time of her writing (1844-45) she 
considers literature as in a "dim and struggling 
state," with *' pecuniary results exceedingly piti- 
ful. The state of things gets worse and worse, 
as less and less is offered for works demanding 
great devotion of time and labor, and the pub- 
lisher, obliged to regard the transaction as a 
II 



l62 MARGARET FULLER. 

matter of business, demands of the author only 
what will find an immediate market, for he can- 
not afford to take anything else." 

Margaret thinks that matters were better in 
this respect during the first half-century of our 
republican existence. The country was not then 
" so deluged with the dingy page reprinted from 
Europe." Nor did Americans fail to answer 
sharply the question, " Who reads an American 
book ? " But the books of that period, to which 
she accords much merit, seem to her so re- 
flected from England in their thought and 
inspiration, that she inclines to call them Eng- 
lish rather than American. 

Having expressed these general views, Mar- 
garet proceeds to pass in review the prominent 
American writers of the time, beginning with 
the department of history. In this she accords 
to Prescott industry, the choice of valuable ma- 
terial, and the power of clear and elegant 
arrangement. She finds his books, however, 
" wonderfully tame," and characterized by " the 
absence of th^ight." In Mr. Bancroft she rec- 
ognizes a writer of a higher order, possessed of 
" leading thoughts, by whose aid he groups his 
facts." Yet, by her own account, she has 
read him less diHgently than his brother his- 
torian. 

In ethics and philosophy she mentions, as 



VIEW OF CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS. 163 

" likely to live and be blessed and honored in the 
later time," the names of Channing and Emer- 
son. Of the first she says : " His leading idea 
of the dignity of human nature is one of vast 
results, and the pecuHar form in which he ad- 
vocated it had a great work to do in this new 
world. . . . On great questions he took middle 
ground, and sought a panoramic view. . . . He 
was not well acquainted with man on the impul- 
sive and passionate side of his nature, so that 
his view of character was sometimes narrow, but 
always noble." 

Margaret turns from the great divine to her 
Concord friend as one turns from shade to sun- 
shine. " The two men are alike," she says, '* in 
dignity of purpose, disinterest, and purity." But 
of the two she recognizes Mr. Emerson as the 
profound thinker and man of ideas, dealing 
" with causes rather than with effects." His 
influence appears to her deep, not wide, but 
constantly extending its circles. He is to her 
*' a harbinger of the better day." 

Irving, Cooper, Miss Sedgvwick, and Mrs. 
Child are briefly mentioned, but with charac- 
teristic appreciation. " The style of story cur- 
rent in the magazines " is pronounced by her 
" flimsy beyond any texture that was ever spun 
or dreamed of by the mind of man." 

Our friend now devotes herself to the poets of 



l64 MARGARET FULLER. 

America, at whose head she places *' Mr. Bryant, 
alone." Genuineness appears to be his chief 
merit, in her eyes, for she does not find his 
genius either fertile or comprehensive. '' But 
his poetry is purely the language of his inmost 
nature, and the simple, lovely garb in which his 
thoughts are arrayed, a direct gift from the 
Muse." 

Halleck, Willis, and Dana receive each their 
meed of praise at her hands. Passing over what 
is said, and well said, of them, we come to a criti- 
cism on Mr. Longfellow, which is much at vari- 
ance with his popular reputation, and which, 
though acute and well hit, will hardly commend 
itself to-day to the judgment either of the 
learned or unlearned. For, even if Mr. Long- 
fellow's inspiration be allowed to be a reflected 
rather than an original one, the mirror of his 
imagination is so pure and broad, and the im- 
ages it reflects are so beautiful, that the world 
of our time confesses itself greatly his debtor. 
The spirit of his Hfe, too, has put the seal of a 
rare earnestness and sincerity upon his legacy 
to the world of letters. But let us hear Marga- 
ret's estimate of him : — 

" Longfellow is artificial and imitative. He 
borrows incessantly, and mixes what he bor- 
rows, so that it does not appear to the best ad- 
vantage. . . . The ethical part of his writing has 



V]EW OF CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS. 1 65 

a hollow, second-hand sound. He has, however, 
elegance, a love of the beautiful, and a fancy for 
what is large and manly, if not a full sympathy 
with it. His verse breathes at times much 
sweetness. Though imitative, he is not me- 
chanical." 

In an article of some length, printed in con- 
nection with this, but first published in the 
" New York Tribune," Margaret's dispraise of 
this poet is in even larger proportion to her 
scant commendation of him. This review was 
called forth by the appearance of an illustrated 
edition of Mr. Longfellow's poems, most of 
which had already appeared in smaller volumes, 
and in the Annuals, which once figured so 
largely in the show-assthetics of society. Mr. 
Greeley, in some published reminiscences, tells 
us that Margaret undertook this task with great 
reluctance. He, on the other hand, was too 
much overwhelmed with business to give the 
volume proper notice, and so persuaded Marga- 
ret to deal with it as she could. 

After formulating a definition of poetry which 
she considers " large enough to include all ex- 
cellence," she laments the dearth of true poetry, 
and asserts that " never was a time when satir- 
ists were more needed to scourge from Par- 
nassus the magpies who are devouring the food 
scattered there for the singing birds." This 



l66 MARGARET FULLER. 

scourge she somewhat exercises upon writers 
who " did not write because they felt obHged 
to relieve themselves of the swelling thought 
within, but as an elegant exercise which may 
win them rank and reputation above the crowd. 
Their lamp is not lit by the sacred and inevita- 
ble lightning from above, but carefully fed by 
their own will to be seen of men." 

These metaphors no longer express the most 
accepted view of jDoetical composition. It has 
been found that those who write chiefly to re- 
lieve themselves are very apt to do so at the 
expense of the reading public. The "inevitable 
lightning," with which some are stricken, does 
not lead to such good work as does the " lamp 
carefully fed " by a steadfast will, whose tenor 
need not be summarily judged. 

These strictures are intended to apply to 
versifiers in England as well as in America. 

" Yet," she says, " there is a middle class, 
composed of men of little original poetic power, 
but of much poetic taste and sensibility, whom 
we would not wish to have silenced. They do 
no harm, but much good (if only their minds 
are not confounded with those of a higher class), 
by educating in others the faculties dominant 
in themselves." In this class she places Mr. 
Longfellow, towards whom she confesses " a 
coolness, in consequence of the exaggerated 



VIEW OF CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS. 167 

praises that have been bestowed upon him." 
Perhaps the best thing she says about him is 
that " nature with him, whether human or ex- 
ternal, is always seen through the windows of 
literature." 

Mr. Longfellow did, indeed, dwell in the 
beautiful house of culture, but with a heart 
deeply sensitive to the touch of the humanity 
that lay encamped around it. In the " Psalm of 
Life," his banner, blood-red with sympathy, was 
hung upon the outer wall. And all his further 
parley with the world was through the silver 
trumpet of peace. 

According much praise to William EUery 
Channing, and not a little to Cornelius Mat-, 
thews, a now almost forgotten writer, Margaret 
declares Mr. Lowell to be " absolutely wanting 
in the true spirit and tone of poesy." She says 
further : — 

" His interest in the moral questions of the 
day has supplied the want of vitality in himself. 
His great facility at versification has enabled 
him to fill the ear with a copious stream of 
pleasant sound. But his verse is stereotyped, 
his thought sounds no depth, and posterity will 
not remember him." 

The " Biglow Papers " were not yet written, 
nor the '^ Vision of Sir Launfal." Still less was 
foreseen the period of the struggle whose victori- 



l68 MARGARET FULLER. 

ous close drew from Mr. Lowell a " Commemora- 
tion Ode" worthy to stand beside Mr. Emerson's 
" Boston Hymn." 

In presenting a study of Margaret's thoughts 
and life, it seemed to us impossible to omit some 
consideration of her pronounced opinions con- 
cerning the most widely known of her American 
compeers in literature. Having brought these 
before the reader, we find it difficult to say the 
right word concerning them. 

In accepting or rejecting a criticism, we 
should consider, first, its intention ; secondly, its 
method ; and, in the third place, its standard. 
If the first be honorable, the second legitimate, 
and the third substantial, we shall adopt the 
conclusion arrived at as a just result of analytic 
art. 

In the judgments just quoted, we must believe 
the intention to have been a sincere one. But 
neither the method nor the standard satisfies us. 
The one is arbitrary, the other unreal. Our 
friend's appreciation of her contemporaries was 
influenced, at the time of her writing, by idio- 
syncrasies of her own which could not give the 
law to the general public. These were shown 
in her great dislike of the smooth and stereo- 
typed in manner, and her impatience of the 
common level of thought and sentiment. The 
unusual had for her a great attraction. It prom- 



VIEIF OF CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS. 169 

ised originality, which to her seemed a condi- 
tion of truth itself. She has said in this very 
paper : " No man can be absolutely true to 
himself, eschewing cant, compromise, servile 
imitation, and complaisance, without becoming 
original." 

Here we seem to find a confusion between 
two conceptions of the word " original." Origi- 
nality in one acceptation is vital and universal. 
We originate from the start, and do not become 
original. But the power to develop forms of 
thought which shall deserve to be called original 
is a rare gift, and one which even conscience 
cannot command at will. 

The sentences here quoted and commented 
on show us that Margaret, almost without her 
own knowledge, was sometimes a partisan of the 
intellectual reaction of the day, which attacked, 
in the name of freedom, the fine, insensible 
tyranny of form and precedent. In its place 
were temporarily enthroned the spontaneous 
and passionate. Miracles were expected to fol- 
low this change of base, oracles from children, 
availing philosophies from people who were 
rebels against all philosophy. Margaret's pas- 
sionate hopefulness at times carried her within 
this sphere, where, however, her fine percep- 
tions and love of thorough culture did not allow 
her to remain. 



CHAPTER X. 

ocean voyage. arrival at liverpool. the 

lake country. wordsworth. miss marti- 

neau. edinburgh. de quincey. mary, 

queen of scots. night on ben lomond. 

james martineau. william j. fox. london. 

joanna baillie. mazzini. thomas carlyle. 

— Margaret's impressions of him. — his esti- 
mate OF HER. 

The time had now come when Margaret's dar- 
ling wish was to be fulfilled. An opportunity of 
going abroad offered itself under circumstances 
which she felt able to accept. On the ist of 
August, 1846, she sailed for Europe in the 
" Cambria," then the favorite steamer of the 
Cunard line, with Captain Judkins, the most 
popular and best known of the company's com- 
manders. Her travelling companions were Mr. 
and Mrs. Marcus Spring, of Eaglewood, N. J. 

She anticipated much from this journey, — 
delight, instruction, and the bodily view of a 
whole world of beauties which she knew, as yet, 
only ideally. Beyond and unguessed lay the 



OCEAN VOYAGE. I/I 

mysteries of fate, from whose depths she was 
never to emerge in her earthly form. 

Margaret already possessed the spirit of all 
that is most valuable in European culture. She 
knew the writers of the Old World by study, 
its brave souls by sympathy, its works of art, 
more imperfectly, through copies and engrav- 
ings. The Europe which she carried in her 
mind was not that which the superficial ob- 
server sees with careless eyes, nor could it alto- 
gether correspond with that which she, in her 
careful and thoughtful travel, would discern. 
But the possession of the European mind was 
a key destined to unlock for her the true signifi- 
cance of European society. 

The voyage was propitious. Arriving in Eng- 
land, Margaret visited the Mechanics' Institute 
in Liverpool, and found the " Dial " quoted in 
an address recently given by its director. Sen- 
tences from the writings of Charles Sumner and 
Elihu Burritt adorned the pages of Bradshaw's 
" Railway Guide," and she was soon called upon 
to note the wide discrepancy between the views 
of enlightened Englishmen and the selfish policy 
of their government, corresponding to the more 
vulgar passions and ambitions of the people at 
large. 

Passing into the Lake Country, she visited 
Wordsworth at Ambleside, and found " no 



172 MARGARET FULLER. 

Apollo, flaming with youthful glory, but, in- 
stead, a reverend old man, clothed in black, and 
walking with cautious step along the level gar- 
den path." The aged poet, then numbering 
seventy-six years, " but of a florid, fair old age," 
showed the visitors his household portraits, his 
hollyhocks, and his fuchsias. His sechided mode 
of Hfe, Margaret learned, had so separated him 
from the living issues of the time, that the needs 
of the popular heart touched him but remotely. 
She found him, however, less intolerant than she 
had feared concerning the repeal of the Corn 
Laws, a measure upon which public opinion was 
at the time strongly divided. 

In this neighborhood Margaret again saw 
Miss Martineau, at a new home ''presented to 
her by the gratitude of England for her course 
of energetic and benevolent effort." Dean Mil- 
man, historian and dramatist, was here intro- 
duced to Margaret, who describes him as " a 
specimen of the polished, scholarly man of the 
world." 

Margaret now visited various places of inter- 
est in Scotland, and in Edinburgh saw Dr. An- 
drew Combe, Dr. Chalmers, and De Quincey. 
Dr. Combe, an eminent authority in various de- 
partments of medicine and physiology, was a 
younger brother of George Combe, the distin- 
guished phrenologist. He had much to say 



DE QUINCE Y. 1 73 

about his tribulations with the American pub- 
Hshers who had pirated one of his works, but 
who refused to print an emended edition of it, 
on the ground that the book sold well enough as 
it was. Margaret describes Dr. Chalmers as 
"half shepherd, half orator, florid, portly, yet of 
an intellectually luminous appearance." 

De Quincey was of the same age as Words- 
worth. Margaret finds his " thoughts and 
knowledge " of a character somewhat super- 
seded by the progress of the "age. She found 
him, not the less, " an admirable narrator, not 
rapid, but gliding along like a rivulet through 
a green meadow, giving and taking a thousand 
little beauties not required to give his story due 
relief, but each, in itself, a separate boon." She 
admires, too, " his urbanity, so opposed to the 
rapid, slang, Vivian-Greyish style current in the 
literary conversation of the day." 

Among Margaret's meditations in Scotland 
was one which she records as " the bootless, 
best thoughts I had while looking at the dull 
bloodstain and blocked-up secret stair of Holy- 
rood, at the ruins of Loch Leven Castle, and 
afterwards at Abbotsford, where the picture of 
Queen Mary's head, as it lay on the pillow when 
severed from the block, hung opposite to a fine 
caricature of Queen Elizabeth, dancing high and 
disposedly." We give here a part of this medi- 
tation : — 



1/4 MARGARET FULLER. 

" Surely, in all the stern pages of life's account- 
book there is none on which a more terrible 
price is exacted for every precious endowment. 
Her rank and reign only made her powerless to 
do good, and exposed her to danger. Her tal- 
ents only served to irritate her foes and dis- 
appoint her friends. This most charming of 
women was the destruction of her lovers. Mar- 
ried three times, she had never any happiness 
as a wife, but in both the connections of her 
choice found that she had either never pos- 
sessed or could not retain, even for a few weeks, 
the love of the men she had chosen. ... A 
mother twice, and of a son and daughter, both 
the children were brought forth in loneliness 
and sorrow, and separated from her early, her 
son educated to hate her, her dausfhter at once 
immured in a convent. Add the eighteen years 
of her imprisonment, and the fact that this fool- 
ish, prodigal world, when there was in it one 
woman fitted by her grace and loveliness to 
charm all eyes and enliven all fancies, suffered 
her to be shut up to water with her tears her 
dull embroidery during the full rose-blossom of 
her life, and you will hardly get beyond this 
story for a tragedy, not noble, but pallid and 
forlorn." 

From Edinburgh Margaret and her party 
made an excursion into the Highlands. The 



A NIGHT ON BEN LOMOND. 1 75 

Stage-coach was not yet displaced by the loco- 
motive, and Margaret enjoyed, from the top, 
the varying aspect of that picturesque region. 
Perth, Loch Leven, and Loch Katrine were 
visited, and Rowardennan, the place from which 
the ascent of Ben Lomond is usually made by 
travellers. Margaret attempted this feat with 
but one companion, and without a guide, the 
people at the inn not having warned her of any 
danger in so doing. 

The ascent she found delightful. So magnifi- 
cent was the prospect, that, in remembering it, 
she said : " Had that been, as afterwards seemed 
likely, the last act of my life, there could not 
have been a finer decoration painted on the cur- 
tain which was to drop upon it." 

The proverbial facilis desceiisus did not here 
hold good, and the revocare gi^aduin nearly cost 
Margaret her life. Beginning to descend at four 
in the afternoon, the indistinct path was soon 
lost. Margaret's companion left her for a mo- 
ment in search of it, and could not find her. 

" Soon he called to me that he had found it 
[the path], and I followed in the direction where 
he seemed to be. But I mistook, overshot it, 
and saw him no more. In about ten minutes 
I became alarmed, and called him many times. 
It seems he, on his side, did the same, but the 
brow of some hill was between us, and we nei- 
ther saw nor heard one another." 



1/6 MARGARET FULLER. 

Margaret now made many attempts to extri- 
cate herself from her dangerous situation, and 
at last attained a point from which she could 
see the lake, and the inn from which she had 
started in the morning. But the mountain paths 
were crossed by watercourses, and hemmed in 
by bogs. After much climbing up and down, 
Margaret, already wet, very weary, and thinly 
clad, saw that she must pass the night on the 
mountain. The spot at which the light forsook 
her was of so precipitous a character as to leave 
her, in the dark, no Uberty of movement. Yet 
she did keep in motion of some sort through the 
whole of that weary night ; and this, she sup- 
poses, saved her life. The stars kept her com- 
pany for two hours, when the mist fell and hid 
them. The moon rose late, and was but dimly 
discernible. At length morning came, and Mar- 
garet, starting homeward once more, came upon 
a company of shepherds, who carried her, ex- 
hausted, to the inn, where her distressed friends 
were waiting for news of her. Such was the 
extent of the mountain, that a party of twenty 
men, with dogs, sent in search of the missing 
one, were not heard by her, and did not hear her 
voice, which she raised from time to time, hoping 
to call some one to her rescue. The strength 
of Margaret's much-abused constitution was 
made evident by her speedy recover}^ from the 



JAMES MARTINEAU. 1 77 

effects of this severe exposure. A fit vigil, this, 
for one who was about to witness the scenes 
of 1848. She speaks of the experience as 
" sublime indeed, a never-to-be-forgotten pre- 
sentation of stern, serene realities. ... I had 
had my grand solitude, my Ossianic visions, 
and the pleasure of sustaining myself." After 
visiting Glasgow and Stirling, Margaret and her 
friends returned to England by Abbotsford and 
Melrose. 

In Birmingham Margaret heard two discourses 
from George Dawson, then considered a young 
man of much promise. In Liverpool she had 
already heard James Martineau, and in London 
she listened to William Fox. She compares 
these men with William Henry Channing and 
Theodore Parker : — 

" None of them compare in the symmetrical 
arrangement of extempore discourse, or in pure 
eloquence and communication of spiritual beauty, 
with Channing, nor in fulness and sustained flow 
with Parker." 

Margaret's estimate of Martineau is inter- 
esting : — 

" Mr. Martineau looks like the over-intellect- 
ual, the partially developed man, and his speech 
confirms this impression. He is sometimes con- 
servative, sometimes reformer, not in the sense 
of eclecticism, but because his powers and views 



178 MARGARET FULLER, 

do not find a true harmony. On the conserva- 
tive side he is scholarly, acute ; on the other, 
pathetic, pictorial, generous. He is no prophet 
and no sage, yet a man full of fine affections 
and thoughts ; always suggestive, sometimes 
satisfactory." 

Mr. Fox appears to her " the reverse of all 
this. He is homogeneous in his materials, and 
harmonious in the results he produces. He has 
great persuasive power ; it is the persuasive 
power of a mind warmly engaged in seeking 
truth for itself." 

What a leap did our Margaret now make, 
from Puritanic New England, Roundhead and 
Cromwellian in its character, into the very 
heart of Old England, — into that London 
which, in those days, and for long years after, 
might have been called the metropolis of the 
world ! Wonders of many sorts the " province 
in brick " still contains. Still does it most as- 
tonish those who bring to it the most knowledge. 
But the social wonders which it then could boast 
have passed away, leaving no equals to take their 
place. 

Charles Dickens was then in full bloom, — 
Thackeray in full bud. Sydney Smith exer- 
cised his keen, discreet wit. Kenyon not only 
wrote about pink champagne, but dispensed it 
with many other good things. Rogers enter- 



LONDON. lyg 

tained with exquisite taste, and showed his art- 
treasures without ostentation. Tom Moore, Hke 
a veteran canary, chirped, but would not sing. 
Lord. Brougham and the Iron Duke were seen 
in the House of Lords. Carlyle growled and 
imbibed strong tea at Chelsea. The Queen was 
in the favor of her youth, with her handsome 
husband always at her side. The Duchess of 
Sutherland, a beautiful woman with lovely 
daughters, kept her state at Stafford House. 
Lord Houghton was known as Monckton Milnes. 
The Honorable Mrs. Norton wore her dark hair 
folded upon her classic head, beneath a circlet 
of diamonds. A first season in London was 
then a bewilderment of brilliancy in reputations, 
beauties, and entertainments. Margaret did not 
encounter the season, but hoped to do so at a 
later day. For the moment she consoled herself 
thus : — 

" I am glad I did not at first see all that pomp 
and parade of wealth and luxury in contrast 
with the misery — squahd, agonizing, ruffianly — 
which stares one in the face in every street of 
London, and hoots at the gates of her palaces a 
note more ominous than ever was that of owl 
or raven in the portentous times when empires 
and races have crumbled and fallen from inward 
decay." 

Margaret expresses the hope that the social 



l80 MAJIGARET FULLER. 

revolution, which to her seemed imminent in 
England, may be a peaceful one, " which shall 
destroy nothing except the shocking inhumanity 
of exclusiveness." She speaks with appreciation 
of the National and Dulwich Galleries, the Brit- 
ish Museum, the Zoological Gardens. Among 
the various establishments of benevolence and 
reform, she especially mentions a school for poor 
Italian boys, with which Mazzini had much to 
do. This illustrious man was already an exile in 
London, as was the German poet, Freiligrath. 

Margaret was an admirer of Joanna Baillie, 
and considered her and the French Madame 
Roland as *' the best specimens hitherto offered 
of women of a Roman strength and singleness of 
mind, adorned by the various culture and capa- 
ble of the various action opened to them by the 
progress of the Christian idea." 

She thus chronicles her visit to Miss Baillie : 
'' We found her in her little, calm retreat at 
Hampstead, surrounded by marks of love and 
reverence from distinguished and excellent 
friends. Near her was the sister, older than 
herself, yet still sprightly and full of active 
kindness, whose character she has, in one of her 
last poems, indicated with such a happy mixture 
of sagacity, humor, and tender pathos, and with 
so absolute a truth of outline. Although no 
autograph hunter, I asked for theirs ; and when 



THOMAS CARLYLE. l8l 

the elder gave hers as 'sister to Joanna Baillie,' 
it drew a tear from my eye, — a good tear, a 
genuine pearl, fit homage to that fairest prod- 
uct of the soul of man, humble, disinterested 
tenderness." 

Margaret also visited Miss Berry, the friend 
of Horace Walpole, long a celebrity, and at that 
time more than eighty years old. In spite of 
this, Margaret found her still characterized by 
the charm, " careless nature or refined art," 
which had made her a social power once and 
always. 

But of all the notable personages who might 
have been seen in the London of that time, no 
one probably interested Margaret so much as did 
Thomas Carlyle. Her introduction to him was 
from Mr. Emerson, his friend and correspond- 
ent ; and it was such as to open to her, more 
than once, the doors of. the retired and reserved 
house, in which neither time nor money was 
lavished upon the entertainment of strangers. 

Mr. Carlyle's impressions of Margaret have 
now been given to the world in the published 
correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson. She 
Mad, long before, drawn her portrait of him in 
one of her letters descriptive of London and its 
worthies. The candid criticism of both is full 
of interest, and may here be contrasted. Mar- 
garet says : — 



1 82 MARGARET FULLER. 

" I approached him with more reverence after 
a little experience of England and Scotland had 
taught me to appreciate the strength and height 
of that wall of shams and conventions which he, 
more than any other man, or thousand men, — 
indeed, he almost alone, — has begun to throw 
down. He has torn off the veils from hideous 
facts ; he has burnt away foolish illusions ; he 
has touched the rocks, and they have given fprth 
musical answer. Little more was wanting to 
begin to construct the city ; but that little was 
wanting, and the work of construction is left to 
those that come after him. Nay, all attempts 
of the kind he is the readiest to deride, fearing 
new shams worse than the old, unable to trust 
the general action of a thought, and finding no 
heroic man, no natural king, to represent it and 
challenge his confidence." 

How significant is this phrase, — " unable to 
trust the general action of a thought." This 
saving faith in the power of just thought Car- 
lyle, the thinker, had not. 

With a reverence, then, not blind, but dis- 
criminating, Margaret approached this luminous 
mind, and saw and heard its possessor thus : — 

" Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuber- 
ant richness of his writings, his talk is still an 
amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced 
with steady eyes. He does not converse, only 



EER ESTIMATE OF CARLYLE. 1 83 

harangues. It is the usual misfortune of such 
marked men that they cannot allow other minds 
room to breathe and show themselves in their 
atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and 
instruction which the greatest never cease to 
need from the experience of the humblest. . . . 
Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing, but 
in his arrogance there is no littleness or self- 
love : it is the heroic arrogance of some old 
Scandinavian conqueror ; it is his nature, and 
the untamable impulse that has given him power 
to crush the dragons. 

" For the higher kinds of poetry he has no 
sense, and his talk on that subject is delight- 
fully and gorgeously absurd. . . . He puts out 
his chin sometimes till it looks like the beak of 
a bird ; and his eyes flash bright, instinctive 
meanings, like Jove's bird. Yet he is not calm 
and grand enough for the eagle : he is more like 
the falcon, and yet not of gentle blood enough 
for that either. ... I cannot speak more nor 
wiselier of him now ; nor needs it. His works 
are true to blame and praise him, — the Sieg- 
fried of England, great and powerful, if not quite 
invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy 
evil than to legislate for good." 

In a letter to Mr. Emerson, Margaret gives 
some account of her visits at the Carlyle man- 
sion. The second of these was on the occasion 



1 84 MARGARET FULLER. 

of a dinner-party, at which she met "a witty, 
French, flippant sort of a man, author of a His- 
tory of Philosophy, and now writing a Hfe of 
Goethe," presumably George Lewes. Margaret 
acknowledges that he told stories admirably, and 
that his occasional interruptions of Carlyle's 
persistent monologue were welcome. Of this, 
her summary is too interesting to be omitted 
here : — 

" For a couple of hours he was talking about 
poetry, and the whole harangue was one elo- 
quent proclamation of the defects in his own 
mind. Tennyson wrote in verse because the 
schoolmasters had taught him that it was great 
to do so ; and had thus, unfortunately, been 
turned from the true path for a man. Burns 
had, in like manner, been turned from his voca- 
tion. Shakespeare had not had the good sense 
to see that it would have been better to write 
straight on in prose ; and such nonsense which, 
though amusing enough at first, he ran to death 
after a while. . . . The latter part of the evening, 
however, he paid us for this by a series of 
sketches, in his finest style of railing and rail- 
lery, of -modern French literature. All were de- 
preciating except that of Beranger. Of him he 
spoke with perfect justice, because with hearty 
sympathy." 

The retirement of the ladies to the drawing- 



HER ESTIMATE OF CARLYLE. 1 85 

room afforded Margaret an opportunity which 
she had not yet enjoyed. 

" I had afterward some talk with Mrs. Car- 
lyle, whom hitherto I had only seen, — for who 
can speak while her husband is there ? I hke 
her very much ; she is full of grace, sweetness, 
and talent. Her eyes are sad and charming." 

Margaret saw the Carlyles only once more. 

" They came to pass an evening with us. 
Unluckily, Mazzini was with us, whose society, 
when he was there alone, I enjoyed more than 
any. He is a beauteous and pure music ; also, 
he is a dear friend of Mrs. Carlyle. But his being 
there gave the conversation a turn to progress 
and ideal subjects, and Carlyle was fluent in 
invectives on all our * rose-water imbecilities.* 
We all felt distant from him, and Mazzini, after 
some vain efforts to remonstrate, became very 
sad. Mrs. Carlyle said to me : ' These are but 
opinions to Carlyle ; but to Mazzini, who has 
given his all, and helped bring his friends to the 
scaffold in pursuit of such subjects, it is a matter 
of life and death.' " 

Clearly, Carlyle had not, in Margaret's esti- 
mation, the true gospel. She would not bow 
to the Titanic forces, whether met with in 
the romances of Sand or in his force-theory. 
And so, bidding him farewell with great ad- 
miration, she passes on, as she says, "more 



1 86 MARGARET FULLER. 

lowly, more willing to be imperfect, since Fate 
permits such noble creatures, after all, to be 
only this or that. Carlyle is only a lion." 

Carlyle, on his side, writes of her to Mr. 
Emerson : — 

" Margaret is an excellent soul : in real regard 
with both of us here. Since she went, I have 
been reading some of her papers in a new Book 
we have got : greatly superior to all I knew 
before : in fact, the undeniable utterances (now 
first undeniable to me) of a truly heroic mind ; 
altogether unique, so far as I know, among the 
writing women of this generation ; rare enough, 
too, God knows, among the writing men. She 
is very narrow, sometimes, but she is truly high. 
Honor to Margaret, and more and more good 
speed to her." 

At a later day he sums up his impressions of 
her in this wise : — 

" Such a predetermination to eat this big 
Universe as her oyster or her egg, and to 
be absolute empress of all height and glory 
in it that her heart could conceive, I have not 
before seen in any human soul. Her ' moun- 
tain me,' ^ indeed- ; but her courage, too, is 
high and clear, her chivalrous nobleness d toute 
epreitve!' 

Margaret's high estimate of Mazzini will be 

1 Quoted from Mr. Emerson's reminiscences. 



MAZZINI. 187 

justified by those who knew him or knew of 
him : — 

" Mazzini, one of these noble refugees, is not 
only one of the heroic, the courageous, and the 
faithful, — Italy boasts many such, — but he is 
also one of the wise, — one of those who, disap- 
pointed in the outward results of their under- 
takings, can yet 'bate no jot of heart and hope,' 
but must ' steer right onward.' For it was no 
superficial enthusiasm, no impatient energies, 
that impelled him, but an understanding of what 
must be the designs of Heaven with regard to 
man, since God is Love, is Justice. He is one 
of those beings who, measuring all things by 
the ideal standard, have yet no time to mourn 
over failure or imperfection ; there is too much 
to be done to obviate it." 

She finds in his papers, published in the 
" People's Journal," " the purity of impulse, 
largeness and steadiness of view, and fineness 
of discrimination which must belong to a legis- 
lator for a Christian commonwealth." 

Much as Margaret admired the noble senti- 
ments expressed in Mazzini's writings, she ad- 
mired still more the love and wisdom which led 
the eminent patriot to found, with others, the 
school for poor Italian boys already spoken of. 
More Christ-like did she deem this labor than 
aught that he could have said or sung. 



l88 MARGARET FULLER. 

" As among the fishermen and poor people of 
Judaea were picked up those who have become 
to modern Europe a leaven that leavens the 
whole mass, so may these poor Italian boys 
yet become more efficacious as missionaries to 
their people than would an Orphic poet at this 
period." 

At the distribution of prizes to the school, 
in which Mazzini and Mariotti took part, some 
of the Polish exiles also being present, ' she 
seemed to see ** a planting of the kingdom of 
Heaven." 

Margaret saw a good deal of James Garth 
Wilkinson, who later became prominent as the 
author of the work entitled '' The Human Body 
in its Relation to the Constitution of Man." 
She found in him " a sane, strong, and well- 
exercised mind, but in the last degree unpoeti- 
cal in its structure." Dr. Wilkinson published, 
years after this time, a volume of verses which 
amply sustains this judgment. 

"Browning," she writes, "has just married 
Miss Barrett, and gone to Italy. I may meet 
them there." Hoping for a much longer visit at 
some future time, and bewildered, as she says, 
both by the treasures which she had found, 
and those which she had not had opportunity 
to explore, Margaret left London for its social 
and aesthetic antithesis, Paris. 



CHAPTER XL 

PARIS. — Margaret's reception there. — george 

SAND. CHOPIN. RACHEL. LAMENNAIS. BE- 

RANGER. CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES. BERRYER. 

BALL AT THE TUILERIES. — ITALIAN OPERA. 

ALEXANDRE VATTEMARE. SCHOOLS AND REFORM- 
ATORIES. JOURNEY TO MARSEILLES. GENOA. 

LEGHORN. NAPLES. ROME. 

If the aspect of London society has changed 
greatly since Margaret's visit there in 1846, the 
Paris which she saw that winter may be said to 
exist no longer, so completely is its physiognomy 
transformed by the events of the last thirty-seven 
years. Like London, Paris had then some gems 
of the first water, to which nothing in the pres- 
ent day corresponds. Rachel was then queen of 
its tragic stage, George Sand supreme in its lit- 
erary domain. De Balzac, Eugene Sue, Dumas 
p^re, and Beranger then lived and moved among 
admiring friends. Victor Plugo was in early 
middle age. Guizot was in his full prestige, lit- 
erary and administrative. Liszt and Chopin held 
the opposite poles of the musical world, and 



190 MARGARET FULLER. 

wielded, the one its most intense, the other its 
broadest power. The civilized world then looked 
to Paris for the precious traditions of good taste, 
and the city deserved this deference as it does 
not now. 

The sense of security which then prevailed 
in the French capital was indeed illusory. The 
stable basis of things was already undermined 
by the dangerous action of theories and of think- 
ers. Louis Philippe was unconsciously nearing 
the abrupt close of his reign. A new chaos was 
imminent, and one out of which was to come, 
first a heroic uprising, and then a despotism so 
monstrous and mischievous as to foredoom itself, 
a caricature of military empire which for a time 
cheated Europe, and in the end died of the empti- 
ness of its own corruption. 

Into this Paris Margaret came, not unan- 
nounced. Her essayspn American Literature, 
which had recently appeared in her volume 
entitled " Papers on Literature and Art," had 
already been translated into French, and printed 
in the " Revue Independante." The same peri- 
odical soon after published a notice of "Woman 
in the Nineteenth Century." Margaret enjoyed 
the comfortable aspect of the apartment which 
she occupied with her travelling-companions at 
Hotel Rougemont, Boulevard Poissoniere. She 
mentions the clock, mirror, curtained bed, and 



VISIT TO GEORGE SAND. 191 

small wood-fire which were then, and are to-day, 
so costly to the transient occupant. 

Though at first not familiar with the sound of 
the French language, she soon had some pleas- 
ant acquaintances, and was not long in finding 
her way to the literary and social eminences who 
were prepared to receive her as their peer. 

First among these she mentions George Sand, 
to whom she wrote a letter, calling afterwards 
at her house. Her name was not rightly re- 
ported by the peasant woman who opened the 
door, and Margaret, waiting for admittance, 
heard at first the discouraging words, " Madame 
says she does not know you." She stopped to 
send a message regarding the letter she had 
written, and as she spoke, Madame Sand 
opened the door and stood looking at her for 
a moment. 

" Our eyes met. I shall never forget her look 
at that moment. The doorway made a frame 
for her figure. She is large, but well formed. 
She was dressed in a robe of dark violet silk, 
with a black mantle on her shoulders, her beau- 
tiful hair dressed with the greatest taste, her 
whole appearance and attitude, in its simple and 
lady-like dignity, presenting an almost ludicrous 
contrast to the vulgar caricature idea of George 
Sand. Her face is a very little like the portraits, 
but much finer. The upper part of the forehead 



192 MARGARET FULLER. 

and eyes are beautiful, the lower strong and 
masculine, expressive of a hardy temperament 
and strong passions, but not in the least coarse, 
the complexion olive, and the air of the whole 
head Spanish." This striking apparition was 
further commended in Margaret's eyes by " the 
expression of goodness, nobleness, and power" 
that characterized the countenance of the great 
French-wonian. 

Madame Sand said, " C'est vous," and offered 
her hand to Margaret, who, taking it, answered, 
" II me fait du bien de vous voir " (" It does me 
good to see you "). They went into the study. 
Madame Sand spoke of Margaret's letter as 
charmante, and the two ladies then talked on 
for hours, as if they had always known each 
other. Madame Sand had at that moment a 
work in the press, and was hurried for copy, 
and beset by friends and visitors. She kept 
all these at a distance, saying to Margaret : " It 
is better to throw things aside, and seize the 
present moment." Margaret gives this resume 
of the interview : " We did not talk at all of per- 
sonal or private matters. I saw, as one sees in 
her writings, the want of an independent, interior 
life, but I did not feel it as a fault. I heartily 
enjoyed the sense of so rich, so prolific, so ar- 
dent a genius. I liked the woman in her, too, 
very much ; I never liked a woman better." 



CHOPIN. 193 

To complete the portrait, Margaret mentions 
the cigarette, which her new friend did not re- 
linquish during the interview. The impression 
received as to character did not materially differ 
from that already made by her writings. In 
seeing her, Margaret was not led to believe 
that ail her mistakes were chargeable upon the 
unsettled condition of modern society. Yet she 
felt not the less convinced of the generosity and 
nobleness of her nature. " There may have 
been something of the Bacchante in her life," 
says Margaret, some reverting to the wild 
ecstasies of heathen nature-worship, " but she 
was never coarse, never gross." 

Margaret saw Madame Sand a second time, 
surrounded by her friends, and with her daugh- 
ter, who was then on the eve of her marriage 
with the sculptor Clesinger. In this entou- 
rage she had " the position of an intellectual 
woman and good friend ; the same as my 
own," says Margaret, "in the circle of my 
acquaintance as distinguished from my inti- 
mates." 

Beneath the same roof Margaret found Chopin, 
"always ill, and as frail as a snow-drop, but an 
exquisite genius. He played to me, and I liked 
his talking scarcely less." The Polish poet, 
Mickiewicz, said to her, " Chopin gives us the 
Ariel view of the universe." 
13 



194 MARGARET FULLER. 

Margaret had done her best while in London 
to see what the English stage had to offer. The 
result had greatly disappointed her. In France 
she found the theatre living, and found also a 
public which would not have tolerated " one 
touch of that stage-strut and vulgar bombast 
of tone which the English actor fancies indis- 
pensable to scenic illusion." 

In Pans she says that she saw, for the first 
time, ** something represented in a style uniformly 
good." Besides this general excellence, which 
is still aimed at in the best theatres of the Con- 
tinent, the Parisian stage had then a star of the 
first magnitude, whose splendor was without an 
equal, and whose setting brought no successor. 
In the supreme domain of tragic art, Rachel then 
reigned, an undisputed queen. Like George 
Sand, her brilliant front was obscured by the 
cloud of doubt which rested upon her private 
character, — a matter of which even the most 
dissolute age will take note, after its fashion. 
And yet the charmed barrier of the footlights 
surrounded her with a flame of mystery. What- 
ever was knowm or surmised of her elsewhere, 
within those limits she appeared as the living 
impersonation of beauty, grace, and power. For 
Rachel had, at this time, no public sorrow. How 
it might fare with her and her lovers little con- 
cerned the crowds who gathered nightly, drawn 



RACHEL. 195 

by the lightnings of her eye, the melodious thun- 
der of her voice. Ten years later, a new favorite, 
her rival but not her equal, came to win the heart 
of her Paris from her. Then Rachel, grieved and 
angry, knew the vanity of all human dependence. 
She crossed the ocean, and gave the New World 
a new delight. But in spite of its laurels and 
applause,- she sickened (Margaret had said she 
could not live long), and fled far, far eastward, 
to hear in ancient Egypt the death-psalms of 
her people. With a smile, the last change of 
that expressive countenance, its lovely light 
expired. 

Of the woman, Margaret says nothing. Of 
the artist, she says that she found her worthy 
of Greece, and fit to be made immortal in its 
marble. She did not, it is true, find in her the 
most tender pathos, nor yet the sublime of 
sweetness : — - 

" Her range, even in high tragedy, is limited. 
Her noblest aspect is when sometimes she ex- 
presses truth in some severe shape, and rises, 
simple and austere, above the mixed elements 
around her." Had Margaret seen her in "Les 
Horaces " .<* One would think so. 

'' On the dark side, she is very great in hatred 
and revenge. I admired her more in Phedre 
than in any other part in which I saw her. 
The guilty love inspired by the hatred of a 



196 MARGARET FULLER. 

goddess was expressed with a force and ter- 
rible naturalness that almost suffocated the 
beholder." 

Margaret had heard much about the power 
which Rachel could throw into a single look, 
and speaks of it as indeed magnificent. Yet 
she admired most in her '' the grandeur, truth, 
and depth of her conception of each part, and 
the sustained purity with which she repre- 
sented it." 

In seeing other notabilities, Margaret was in- 
deed fortunate. She went one day to call upon 
Lamennais, to whom she brought a letter of in- 
troduction. To her disappointment, she found 
him not alone. But the " citizen-looking, viva- 
cious, elderly man," whom she was at first sorry 
to see with him, turned out to be the poet Be- 
ranger, and Margaret says that she was " very 
happy in that little study, in presence of these 
two men whose influence has been so great, so 
real." It was indeed a very white stone that hit 
two such birds at one throw. 

Margaret heard a lecture from Arago, and 
was not disappointed in him. *' Clear, rapid, 
full, and equal was this discourse, and worthy of 
the master's celebrity." 

The Chamber of Deputies was in those days 
much occupied with the Spanish Marriage, as it 
was called. This was the intended betrothal of 



BALL AT THE TUILERIES. 1 9/ 

the Queen of Spain's sister to the Due de Mont- 
pensier, youngest son of the then reigning King 
of the French, Louis Phihppe. Guizot and 
Thiers were both heard on this matter, but Mar- 
garet heard only M. Berryer, then considered 
the most eloquent speaker of the House. His 
oratory appeared to her, ** indeed, very good ; not 
logical, but plausible, with occasional bursts of 
flame and showers of sparks." While admir- 
ing him, Margaret thinks that her own country 
possesses public speakers of more force, and of 
equal polish. 

At a presentation and ball at the Tuileries 
Margaret was much struck with the elegance 
and grace of the Parisian ladies of high society. 
The Queen made the circuit of state, with the 
youthful Duchess, the cause of so much dis- 
turbance, hanging on her arm. Margaret found 
here some of her own country women, conspicu- 
ous for their beauty. The uniforms and decora- 
tions of the gentlemen contrasted favorably, in 
her view, with the sombre, black-coated masses 
of men seen in circles at home. 

"Among the crowd wandered Leverrier, in 
the costume of an Academician, looking as if he 
had lost, not found, his planet. He seemed not 
to find it easy to exchange the music of the 
spheres for the music of fiddles." 

The Italian Opera in Paris fell far short of 



198 MARGARET FULLER. 

Margaret's anticipations. So curtly does she 
judge it, that one wonders whether she expected 
to find it a true Parnassus, dedicated to the 
ideal expression of the most delicate and lofty 
sentiment. Grisi appeared to her coarse and 
shallow, Persiani mechanical and meretricious, 
Mario devoid of power. Lablache alone satis- 
fied her. 

These judgments show something of the 
weakness of off-hand criticism. In the world 
of art, the critic who wishes to teach, must first 
be taught of the artist. He must be very sure 
that he knows what a work of art is before he 
carps at what it is not. Relying on her own 
great intelligence, and on her love of beautiful 
things, Margaret expected, perhaps, to under- 
stand too easily the merits and defects of what 
she saw and .heard. 

In Paris Margaret met Alexandre Vattemare, 
intent upon his project of the exchange of su- 
perfluous books and documents between the pub- 
lic libraries of different countries. Busy as he 
was, he found time to be of service to her, and 
it was through his efforts that she was enabled 
to visit the Imprimerie Royale and the Mint. 
He also induced the Librarian of the Chamber 
of Deputies to show her the manuscripts of 
Rousseau, which she found "just as he has cele- 
brated them, written on fine white paper, tied 



SCHOOLS AND REFORMATORIES. 199 

with ribbon. Yellow and faded, age has made 
them," says Margaret; "yet at their touch I 
seemed to feel the fire of youth, immortally glow- 
ing, more and more expansive, with which his 
soul has pervaded this century." 

M. Vattemare introduced Margaret to one of 
the evening schools of the Freres Chretiens, 
where she saw with pleasure how much can be 
accomplished for the working classes by evening 
lessons. 

" Visions arose in my mind of all that might be 
done in our country by associations of men and 
women who have received the benefits of liter- 
ary culture, giving such evening lessons through- 
out our cities and villages." Margaret wishes, 
however, that such disinterested effort in our 
own country should not be accompanied by the 
priestly robe and manner which fpr her marred 
the humanity of the Christian Brotherhood of 
Paris. 

The establishment of the Protestant Deacon- 
esses is praised by Margaret. She visited also 
the School for Idiots, near Paris, where her feel- 
ings vented themselves in "a shower of sweet 
and bitter tears ; of joy at what has been done, of 
grief for all that I and others possess, and can- 
not impart to these little ones." She was much 
impressed with the character of the master of 
the school, a man of seven or eight and twenty 



20O MARGARET FULLER. 

years, whose fine countenance she saw "looking 
in love on those distorted and opaque vases of 
humanity." 

Turning her face southward, she thus takes 
leave of the great capital : — 

" Paris ! I was sad to leave thee, thou won- 
derful focus, where ignorance ceases to be a 
pain, because there we find such means daily to 
lessen it." 

Railroads were few in the France of forty 
years ago. Margaret came by diligence and 
boat to Lyons, to Avignon, where she waded 
through the snow to visit the tomb of Laura, 
and to Marseilles, where she embarked for 
Genoa. Her first sight of this city did not 
disappoint her, but to her surprise, she found 
the weather cold and ungenial : — 

" I could not realize that I had actually touched 
those shores to which I had looked forward all 
my life, where it seemed that the heart would 
expand, and the whole nature be turned to de- 
light. Seen by a cutting wind, the marble pal- 
aces, the gardens, the magnificent water-view, 
failed to charm." Both here and in Leghorn 
Margaret visited Italians at their houses, and 
found them very attractive, " charming women, 
refined and eloquent men." The Mediterranean 
voyage was extended as far as Naples, which she 
characterizes as " priest-ridden, misgoverned, full 



ROME. 20 1 

of dirty, degraded men and women, yet still most 
lovely." And here, after a week which appeared 
to be "an exact copy of the miseries of a New- 
England spring," with a wind " villanoiis, horri- 
ble, exactly like the worst east wind of Boston," 
Margaret found at last her own Italy, and found 
it "beautiful, worthy to be loved and embraced, 
not talked about. . . . Baias had still a hid divin- 
ity for me, Vesuvius a fresh baptism of fire, and 
Sorrento — oh ! Sorrento was beyond picture, 
beyond poesy." 

After Naples came Margaret's first view of 
Rome, where she probably arrived early in May, 
and where she remained until late in the month 
of June. We do not find among her letters of 
this period any record of her first impressions 
of the Eternal City, the approach to which, be- 
fore the days of railroads in Italy, was unspeak- 
ably impressive and solemn. 

Seated in the midst of her seven hills, with 
the desolate Campagna about her, one could 
hardly say whether her stony countenance in- 
vited the spirit of the age, or defied it. Her 
mediaeval armor was complete at all points. Her 
heathen heart had kept Christianity far from it 
by using as exorcisms the very forms which, at 
the birth of that religion, had mediated between 
its spirit and the dull sense of the Pagan world. 
It was the nineteenth century in America, the 



202 MARGARET FULLER. 

eighteenth in England, the seventeenth in France, 
and the fifteenth in Rome. The aged hands of 
the grandam still held fast the key of her treas- 
ures. Her haughty front still said to Ruin and 
Desolation, — 

" Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to iti" 

So the writer first saw Rome in the winter 
of 1843. Her walls seemed those of a mighty 
sepulchre, in which even the new-born babe was 
born into death. The stagnation of thought, the 
prohibition of question, the denial of progress ! 
Her ministers had a sweet Lethean draught with 
which to lull the first clamors of awakening life, 
to quiet the first promptings of individual thought. 
It was the draught of Circe, fragrant but fatal. 
And those who fed upon it became pathetic 
caricatures of humanity. 

Not so did Margaret find Rome in 1847. The 
intervening years had wrought a change. Within 
the defiant fortress of superstition a divine acci- 
dent had happened. A man had been brought 
to the chair of St. Peter who felt his own human 
power too strongly to consent to the impotence 
of the traditional 7io;i posstnniLS. To the timid 
questioning of Freedom from without he gave 
the bold answer of Freedom from within. The 
Papal crown had sometimes covered the brows 
of honest, heroic men. Such an one would he 



POPE PIUS. 203 

prove himself, and his first message was to that 
effect. Fortunate, fatal error ! The thrones of 
the earth trembled at it. Crowned heads shook 
with the palsy of fear. The enslaved multitudes 
and their despised champions sent up a ringing 
shout to heaven, for the apocalyptic hour had 
come. The sixth seal was broken, and the can- 
non of St. Angelo, which saluted the crowning 
of the new Pontiff, really saluted the installa- 
tion of the new era. 

Alas ! many woes had to intervene before 
this new order could establish itself upon any 
permanent foundation. The Pope forsook his 
lofty ground. France, republican for a day only, 
became the ally of absolutism, and sent an army 
to subdue those who had believed the papal prom- 
ise and her own. After a frightful interval of suf- 
fering and resistance, this was effected, and Pius 
was brought back, shorn of his splendors, a Jove 
whose thunderbolt had been stolen, a man with- 
out an idea. Then came the confusion of endless 
doubt and question. What had been the secret 
of the Pope's early liberalism } What that of 
his volte-face ? Was it true, as was afterwards 
maintained, that he had been, from the first, a 
puppet, moved by forces quite outside his own 
understanding, and that the moving hands, not 
the puppet, had changed .? Or had he gone to 
war with mighty Precedent, without counting 



204 MARGARET FULLER. 

the cost of the struggle, and so failed ? Or had 
he undergone a poisoning which broke his spirit 
and touched his brain ? 

These were the questions of that time, not 
ours to answer, brought to mind here only be- 
cause they belong to the history of Margaret's 
years in Italy, years in which she learned to love 
that country as her own, and to regard it as the 
land of her spiritual belonging. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Margaret's first days in rome. — antiquities. — 

VISITS TO studios AND GALLERIES. HER OPIN- 
IONS CONCERNING THE OLD MASTERS. HER SYM- 
PATHY WITH THE PEOPLE. POPE PIUS. CELE- 
BRATION OF THE BIRTHDAY OF ROME. PERUGIA. 

BOLOGNA. — RAVENNA. VENICE. A STATE BALL 

ON THE GRAND CANAL. MILAN. MANZONI. 

THE ITALIAN LAKES. PARMA. — SECOND VISIT TO 

FLORENCE. — GRAND FESTIVAL. 

In this first visit to Rome, Margaret could not 
avoid some touch of the disenchantment which 
usually comes with the experience of what has 
been long and fondly anticipated. She had soon 
seen all that is preserved of " the fragments of 
the great time," and says : "They are many and 
precious ; yet is there not so much of high ex- 
cellence as I looked for. They will not float the 
heart on a boundless sea of feeling, like the starry 
night on our V/estern prairies." She confesses 
herself more interested at this moment in the 
condition and prospects of the Italian people 
than in works of art, ancient or modern. In 



206 MARGARET FULLER. 

spite of this, she seems to have been diligent 
in visiting the galleries and studios of Rome. 
Among the latter she mentions those of the 
sculptors Macdonald, Wolff, Tenerani, and Gott, 
whose groups of young people and animals were 
to her ** very refreshing after the grander attempts 
of the present time." She found our own Craw- 
ford just completing a bust of his beautiful wife, 
which is to-day a household treasure among her 
relatives, Margaret preferred his designs to those 
of Gibson, who was then considered the first of 
English sculptors. Among American pauiters 
she found Terry, Cranch, and Hicks at work. 
She saw the German Overbeck surrounded by 
his pictures, looking "as if he had just stepped 
out of one of them, — a lay monk, with a pious 
eye, and habitual morality of thought which 
limits every gesture." 

Among the old masters, Domenichino and 
Titian were those whom she learned to appre- 
ciate only by the actual sight of their paintings. 
Other artists, she thinks, may be well under- 
stood through copies and engravings, but not 
these. She enjoyed the frescos of Caracci 
with " the purest pleasure," tired soon of Guer- 
cino, who had been one of her favorites, and 
could not like Leonardo da Vinci at all. His 
pictures, she confesses, '* show a wonderful deal 
of study and thought. I hate to see the marks 



SYMPATHY WITH THE PEOPLE. 20/ 

of them. I want a simple and direct expression 
of soul." For the explanation of these remarks 
we must refer the reader back to what Mr. Em- 
erson has said of Margaret's idiosyncratic mode 
of judgment. Raphael and Michael Angelo were 
already so well known to her through engrav- 
ings, that their paintings and frescos made no 
new impression upon her. Not so was it with 
Michael's sculptures. Of his Moses she says : 
" It is the only thing in Europe so far which has 
entirely outgone my hopes." 

But the time was not one in which an en- 
thusiast like Margaret could be content to with- 
draw from living issues into the calm imperson- 
ality of art. The popular life around her was 
throbbing with hopes and excitements to which 
it had long been unaccustomed. Visions of 
a living Italy flashed through the crevices of a 
stony despair which had lasted for ages. The 
prospect of representative government was held 
out to the Roman people, and the promise 
was welcomed by a torchlight procession which 
streamed through the Corso like a river of fire, 
and surging up to the Quirinal, where Pius then 
dwelt, " made it a mound of light." The noble 
Greek figures were illuminated, and their calm 
aspect contrasted strongly with the animated 
faces of the Italians. " The Pope appeared on 
his balcony; the crowd shouted th-tix vivas . He 



208 MARGARET FULLER. 

extended his arms ; the crowd fell on their 
knees and received his benediction." Margaret 
says that she had never seen anything finer. 

In this new enthusiasm the people agreed to 
celebrate the birthday of Rome. 

" A great dinner was given at the Baths of 
Titus, in" the open air. The company was on 
the grass in the area, the music at one end ; 
boxes filled with the handsome Roman women 
occupied the other sides. It was a new thing 
here, this popular dinner, and the Romans greeted 
it in an intoxication of hope and pleasure." 
Many political exiles, amnestied by the Pope, 
were present. The Marquis d' Azeglio, painter, 
novelist, and diplomatist, was the most noted of 
the speakers. From this renewed, regenerated 
Rome Margaret went on to visit the northern 
cities of Italy, passing through Perugia on her way 
to Florence. In this neighborhood she explored 
the churches of Assisi, and the Etruscan tombs, 
then newly discovered. She was enchanted 
with the beauty of Perugia, its noble situation, 
and its treasures of early art. Florence inter- 
ested her less than " cities more purely Italian. 
The natural character is ironed out here, and 
done up in a French pattern ; yet there is no 
French vivacity, nor Italian either." The Grand 
Duke was at the time in an impossible position 
between his allegiance to the liberalizing Pope 



RAVENNA. 209 

and his fealty to despotic Austria. Tuscany 
accordingly was "glum as death " on the outside, 
but glowing with dangerous fire within. 

Margaret, before leaving Florence, wrote : 
"Florence is not like Rome. At first I could 
not bear the change ; yet, for the study of the 
fine arts, it is a still richer place. Worlds of 
thought have risen in my mind ; some time you 
will have light from all." 

Here she visited the studios of her country^ 
men, Horatio Greenough and Hiram Powers, 
and, after a month's stay, went on to Bologna, 
where she greatly appreciated the truly Ita- 
lian physiognomy of the city, and rejoiced in 
the record of its women artists and professors, 
nobly recognized and upheld by their fellow- 
citizens. 

Thence she went to Ravenna, prized for its 
curious remains, its Byronic memories, and its 
famous Pineta, dear to students of Dante. After 
this came a fortnight in Venice, which, like An- 
gelo's Moses, surpassed her utmost expectations : 
" There only I began to feel in its fulness Vene- 
tian art. It can only be seen in its own atmos- 
phere. Never had I the least idea of what is to 
be seen at Venice." 

The city was, in those days, a place of refuge 
for throneless royalty. The Duchesse de Berri 
and her son had each a palace on the Grand 
14 



2IO MARGARET FULLER. 

Canal. A queen of another sort, Taglioni, here 
consoled herself for the quiet of her retirement 
from the stage. Margaret had the pleasure of 
an outside view of the fete given by the royal 
Duchess in commemoration of her son's birth- 
day. The aged Duchesse d'Angouleme came 
from Vienna to be present on the occasion. 

" 'T was a scene of fairy-land, the palace full 
of light, so that from the canal could be seen 
even the pictures on the walls. Landing from 
the gondolas, the elegantly dressed ladies and 
gentlemen seemed to rise from the water. We 
also saw them glide up the great stair, rust- 
ling their plumes, and in the reception-room 
make and receive the customary grimaces." A 
fine band of music completed .the attractions of 
the scene. Margaret, listening and looking hard 
by, " thought of the Stuarts, Bourbons, and Bona- 
partes in Italy, and offered up a prayer that 
other names might be added to the list, and 
other princes, more rich in blood than in brain, 
might come to enjoy a perpetual villeggiatiira in 
Italy." 

From Venice Margaret journeyed on to Milan, 
stopping on the way at Vicenza, Verona, Man- 
tua, Lago di Garda, and Brescia, These ten 
days of travel opened to her long vistas of 
historic study, delightful to contemplate, even if 
hopeless to explore fully. No ten days of her 



MANZONI. 211 

previous life, she is sure, ever brought her so far 
in this direction. In approaching Milan her 
thoughts reverted to the " Promessi Sposi." 
Nearly asleep for a moment, she heard the 
sound of waters, and started up to ask, " Is 
that the Adda ? " She had guessed rightly. 
The authorship of this classic work seemed to 
her to secure to its writer, Manzoni, the right 
of eminent domain in and around Milan. Writ- 
ing to Mr. Emerson from this city, she says : — 

"To-day, for the first time, I have seen Man- 
zoni. Manzoni has spiritual efficacy in his 
looks ; his eyes still glow with delicate tender- 
ness. His manners are very engaging, frank, 
expansive ; every word betokens the habitual 
elevation of his thoughts, and (what yon care 
for so much) he says distinct, good things. He 
lives in the house of his fathers, in the simplest 
manner." 

Manzoni had, at the time, somewhat dis- 
pleased his neighbors by a second marriage, 
scarcely considered suitable for him. Margaret, 
however, liked the new wife very well, *'and saw 
why he married her." 

She found less to see in Milan than in other 
Italian cities, and was glad to have there some 
days of quiet after the fatigues of her journey, 
which had been augmented at Brescia by a 
brief attack of fever. She mentions with in- 



212 MARGARET FULLER. 

terest the bust of the celebrated mathematician, 
Maria Gaetana Agnesi, preserved in the Am- 
brosian Library. Among her new acquaint- 
ances here were some young Italian radicals, 
"interested in ideas." 

The Italian Lakes and Switzerland came next 
in the order of her travels. Her Swiss tour she 
calls " a little romance by itself," promising to 
give, at a later date, a description of it, which 
we fail to find anywhere. Returning from it, 
she passed a fortnight at Como, and saw some- 
thing of the Italian nobility, who pass their 
summers on its shores. Here she enjoyed the 
society of the accomplished Marchesa Arconati 
Visconti, whom she had already met in Flor- 
ence, and who became to her a constant and 
valued friend. 

Margaret found no exaggeration in the en- 
thusiasm expressed by poets and artists for the 
scenery of this lake region. The descriptions 
of it given by Goethe, Richter, and Taylor had 
not prepared her for what she saw. Even 
Turner's pictures had fallen short of the real 
beauty. At Lugano she met Lady Franklin, 
the widow of the Arctic explorer. She returned 
to Milan by the 8th of September, in time for 
the great feast of the Madonna, and finally left 
the city *' with great regret, and hope to return." 
In a letter to her brother Richard she speaks of 



THE MILANESE. 21 S 

her radical friends there as " a circle of aspiring 
youth, such as I have not known in any other 
city." Conspicuous among these was the young 
Marquis Guerrieri Gonzaga, commended to her 
by " a noble soul, the quietest sensibility, and a 
brilliant and ardent, though not a great, mind." 
This gentleman has to-day a recognized position 
in Italy as a thoroughly enlightened and intelli- 
gent liberal. 

Margaret found among the Milanese, as she 
must have anticipated, a great hatred of the 
Austrian rule, aggravated, at the time of her 
second visit, by acts of foolish and useless re- 
pression. On the occasion of the festivals at- 
tending the entry of a new archbishop, some 
youths (among them possibly Margaret's radical 
friends) determined to sing the hymn composed 
at Rome in honor of Pius IX. The consequence 
of this was a charge of the armed Austrian 
police upon the defenceless crowd of people 
present, who, giving way, were stabbed by them 
in the back. Margaret's grief and indignation 
at this state of things made her feel keenly the 
general indifference of her own travelling coun- 
try-people to the condition and fate of Italy. 

" Persons who call themselves Americans, — 
miserable, thoughtless Esaus, unworthy their 
high birthright . . . absorbed at home by the lust 
of gain, the love of show, abroad, they see only 



214 MARGARET FULLER. 

the equipages, the fine clothes, the food. They 
have no heart for the idea, for the destiny of 
our own great nation : how can they feel the 
spirit that is struggling in this ? " 

The condition of Italy has been greatly al- 
tered for the better since Margaret wrote these 
words, thirty-six years ago ; but the American 
traveller of this type is to-day, to all intents and 
purposes, what he was then. 

Margaret left Milan before the end of this 
September, to return to Rome. She explored 
with delight the great Certosa of Pavia, and in 
Parma saw the Correggio pictures, of which she 
says: '*A wonderful beauty it is that informs 
them, — not that which is the chosen food of 
my soul, yet a noble beauty, and which did its 
message to me also." Parma and Modena ap- 
pear to her " obliged to hold their breath while 
their poor, ignorant sovereigns skulk in corners, 
hoping to hide from the coming storm." 

Before reaching Rome, Margaret made a sec- 
ond visit to Florence. The liberty of the press 
had been recently established in Tuscany, under 
happy auspices. This freedom took effect in 
the establishment of two liberal papers, "Alba" 
(" The Dawn "), and " Patria," needless to trans- 
late. The aim of these was to educate the youth 
and the working classes, by promoting fearless- 
ness in thought and temperance in action. 



GRAND FESTIVAL. 215 

The creation of the National Guard had given 
confidence to the people. Shortly before Mar- 
garet's arrival this event had been celebrated 
by a grand public festival, preceded by a general 
reconciliation of public and private differences, 
and culminating in a general embracing, and 
exchanging of banners. She speaks of this as 
a "new great covenant of brotherly love," in 
which " all was done in that beautiful poetic 
manner peculiar to this artist-people." In this 
feast of reconciliation residen-t Americans bore 
their part, Horatio Greenough taking the lead 
among them. Margaret's ears were refreshed 
by continually hearing in the streets the singing 
of the Roman hymn composed in honor of Pope 
Pius. Wishing that her own country might 
send some substantial token of sympathy to the 
land of its great discoverers, she suggests that 
a cannon, named for one of these, woiild be the 
most fitting gift.^ The first letter from Rome 
after these days is dated Oct. 18, 1847. 

1 Cabot, a well-known Boston patronymic 



CHAPTER XIII. 

PERIOD OF AGITATION IN ROME. MARGARET's ZEAL 

FOR ITALIAN FREEDOM. HER RETURN TO ROME. 

REVIEW OF THE CIVIC GUARD. ^CHURCH FASTS 

AND FEASTS. — POPE PIUS. THE RAINY SEASON. — 

PROMISE OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNIMENT IN 

ROME. CELEBRATION OF THIS EVENT. MAZZINl'S 

LETTER TO THE POPE. BEAUTY OF THE SPRING. 

ITALY IN REVOLUTION. POPULAR EXCITEMENTS IN 

ROME. POPE PIUS DESERTS THE CAUSE OF FREE- 
DOM. MARGARET LEAVES ROME FOR AQUILA. 

The period in -which Margaret now found her- 
self, and its circumstances, may best be de- 
scribed by the adjective •' billowy." Up and 
down, up and down, went the hearts and hopes 
of the liberal party. Hither and thither ran 
the tides of popular affection, suspicion, and re- 
sentment. The Pope was the idol of the mo- 
ment. Whoever might do wrong, he could not. 
The Grand Duke of Tuscany, described by Mar- 
garet as dull but well meaning, yielded to pres- 
sure wherever it became most severe. The 
Austrian occupation was cowardly and cruel, as 
ever. The minor princes, who had been from 



ZEAL FOR ITALIAN FREEDOM. 21/ 

their birth incapable of an idea, tried as well as 
they could to put on some semblance of con- 
cession without really yielding anything. 

The King of Sardinia was spoken of among 
the liberals as a worthless man, without heart 
or honor, only likely to be kept on the right 
side by the stress of circumstance. This judg- 
ment of him was reversed in after years, when, 
behind Casa Guidi windows, Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning wrote, with steadfast hand, " Yea, 
verily. Charles Albert has died well." 

The royalty of Naples tried to quiet its tre- 
mors with blood, and trembled still. And in the 
midst of all this turmoil, down comes Louis 
Philippe from his throne, and France is shaken 
to her very centre. 

To follow Margaret through all the fluctua- 
tions and excitements consequent upon these 
events would be no easy task. She was obvi- 
ously in close relations with leading Italian lib- 
erals, and probably trusted their statements and 
shared their hopes, fears, and resentments. Con- 
stant always in her faith m human nature, and 
in her zeal for the emancipation of Italy, the 
dissolving view before her could leave her no 
other fixed belief. Her favorites, her beloved 
Italian people, even her adored Rome, appeared 
to her at different times in very various lights. 

Starting from the date given above, we will 



2l8 MARGARET FULLER. 

follow, as well as we can, her progress through 
the constantly shifting scenes that surrounded 
her, from whose intense interest she could not, 
for one moment, isolate herself. 

Of her return to Rome, Margaret says : " All 
mean things were forgotten in the joy that 
rushed over me like a flood. ' The difference 
between a sight-seeing tour and a winter's resi- 
dence m such a place is indeed like that between 
a chance acquaintance and an intimate one. 
Settled in a pleasant apartment on the Corso, 
" in a house of loving Italians," Margaret prom- 
ised herself a winter of ** tranquil companion- 
ship" with what she calls " the true Rome." 

She did not find the Italian autumn beautiful, 
as she had expected, but she enjoyed the Octo- 
ber ftstas of the Trasteverini, and went with 
" hall Rome ' to see the manoeuvres of the Civic 
Guard on the Campagna, near the tomb of 
Cecilia Metella. 

To the music of the " Bolognese March " six 
thousand Romans moved in battle array, in full 
sight of the grandiose debris of the heroic time. 

Some sight-seeing Margaret still undertook, 
as we learn from a letter dated November 17, in 
which she speaks of going about " in a coach 
with several people," and confesses that she dis- 
sipates her thoughts on outward beauty. Such 



RETURN TO ROME. 219 

was her delight, at this time, in the "atmos- 
phere of the European mind," that she even 
wished, for a time, to be dehvered from the 
sound of the EngUsh language. 

The beginning of this winter was, as it usually 
is in Italy, a season of fine weather. On the 17th 
of December Margaret rises to bask in beneficent 
floods of sunlight, and to find upon her table the 
roses and grapes which, in New England, would 
have been costly hot-house luxuries. Her let- 
ter of this date is full of her delight in having 
penetrated from the outer aspect to the heart 
of Rome, classic, mediaeval, and modern. And 
here we come upon the record of those first 
impressions concerning which we latterly in- 
dulged in some speculation. 

" Ah ! how joyful to see once more this 
Rome, instead of the pitiful, peddling, Anglicized 
Rome first viewed in unutterable dismay from the 
coupe of the vettura, — a Rome all full of taverns, 
lodging-houses, cheating chambermaids, vilest 
valets de place, and fleas ! A Niobe of nations 
indeed ! Ah ! why (secretly the heart blas- 
phemed) did the sun omit to kill her too, when 
all the glorious race which wore her crown fell 
beneath his ray .'' " 

All this had now disappeared for Margaret, 
and a new enchantment had taken the place of 
the old illusion and disappointment. For she 



220 MARGARET FULLER. 

was now able to disentangle the strange jumble 
of ancient and modern Rome. In this more 
understanding and familiar view, she says : — 

"The old kings, the consuls and tribunes, the 
emperors, drunk with blood and gold, return for 
us. The seven hills tower, the innumerable 
temples glitter, and the Via Sacra swarms with 
triumphal life once more." 

In the later Papal Rome she discerns, through 
the confusion of rite and legend, a sense which 
to her marks the growth " of the human spirit 
struggling to develop its life." And the Rome 
of that day was dear to her in spite of its mani- 
fold corruptions ; dear for the splendor of the 
race, surviving every enslaving and deforming 
influence ; dear for the new-born hope of free- 
dom which she considered safe in the nursing 
of Pope Pius. 

Most of the occasions chronicled by Margaret 
in her letters of this period are of the sort 
familiarly known to travellers, and even to read- 
ers of books of travel. 

The prayers for the dead, early in November, 
the festival of San Carlo Borromeo, the veiling 
of a nun, the worship of the wooden image 
called "the most Holy Child," idolatrous, Mar- 
garet thinks, as that of the Capitoline Jove, the 
blessing of the animals, the festival of the Magi 
at the Propaganda, — these events are all de- 



THE RAINY SEASON. 221 

scribed by her with much good thought and 
susrsrestion. 

She saw the Pope occasionally at the grand 
ceremonies of the Church, and saw the first 
shadow fall upon his popularity, partly in conse- 
quence of some public utterances of his which 
seemed to Margaret " deplorably weak in thought 
and absolute in manner," and which she could 
not but interpret as implying that wherever re- 
form might in future militate against sacerdotal 
traditions, it would go to the wall, in order that 
the priest might triumph. 

The glorious weather had departed almost as 
soon as she had sung its praises, namely, on the 
1 8th of December ; after which time her patience 
was sorely tried by forty days of rain, accom- 
panied by " abominable reeking odors, such as 
blessed cities swept by the sea-breeze never 
know." We copy from one of her letters a 
graphic picture of this time of trial : — 

" It has been dark all day, though the lamp 
has only been lit half an hour. The music of 
the day has been, first, the atrocious arias which 
last in the Corso till near noon. Then came 
the wicked organ-grinder, who, apart from the 
horror of the noise, grinds exactly the same 
obsolete abominations as at home or in England, 
the 'Copenhagen Waltz/ 'Home, Sweet Home,' 
and all that ! The cruel chance that both an 



222 MARGARET FULLER. 

English my-lady and a councillor from the prov- 
inces live opposite, keeps him constantly before 
my window, hoping for bajocchi. 

" Within, the three pet dogs of my landlady, 
bereft of their walk, unable to employ their 
miserable legs and eyes, exercise themselves by 
a continual barking, which is answered by all 
the dogs in the neighborhood. An urchin re- 
turning from the laundress, delighted with the 
symphony, lays down his white bundle in the 
gutter, seats himself on the curb-stone, and at- 
tempts an imitation of the music of cats as a 
tribute to the concert. 

" The door-bell rings. Chi ^ ? (' Who is it ? ') 
cries the handmaid. Enter a man poisoning me 
at once with the smell of the worst possible cigars, 
insisting I shall look upon frightful, ill-cut cam- 
eos and worse-designed mosaics, made by some 
friend of his. Man of ill odors and meanest 
smile ! I am no countess to be fooled by you." 

These passages give us some glimpses of our 
friend in the surroundings which at first gave 
her so much satisfaction, and whose growing 
discomforts were lightened for her by her native 
sense of humor. 

In spite of this, however, " the dirt, the gloom, 
the desolation of Rome" affected her severely. 
Her appetite failed, and with it her strength, 
while nervous headache and fever conspired to 



THE AMERICAN FLAG. 223 

make the whole season appear, in review, " the 
most idle and most suffering" one of her life. 

The most important public event of the winter 
in Rome seems to have been the inauguration of 
a new Council, with some show of popular elec- 
tion, said to have been on the whole satisfactory. 
As this was considered a decided step in the 
direction of progress, preparations were made 
for its celebration by the representatives of other 
Italian States, and of various friendly nations. 
The Americans resident in Rome were aroused 
to an unwonted degree of interest, the gentle- 
men subscribing funds for the materials of a 
flag, and the ladies meeting to make it. To ac- 
company this banner, a magnificent spread eagle 
was procured. Everything was in the height 
of preparation, when some counter-influence, 
brought to bear upon the Pope, led him to issue 
an edict forbidding this happy concourse of the 
flags of all nations, and allowing only that of 
Rome to be carried in honor of the occasion. 
Margaret saw in this the work of the Oscurant- 
ists, " ever on the watch to do mischief " to the 
popular cause. 

Despite the disappointment of the citizens at 
this curtailment of their show, the streets were 
decorated, and filled with people in the best hu- 
mor. Margaret was able to see nothing but this 
crowd, but found even that a great pleasure. A 



224 MARGARET FULLER, 

ball at the Argentina Theatre terminated the 
festivities of the day. Here were seen " Lord 
Minto; Prince Corsini, now senator ; the Torlo- 
nias, in uniform of the Civic Guard, Princess 
Torlonia (the beautiful Colonna) in a sash of 
their colors, which she waved often in answer to 
their greetings." The finest show of the even- 
ing, Margaret says, was the native Saltarello, 
danced by the Trasteverini in their gayest cos- 
tumes. In this dance, which is at once very 
naive and very natural, Margaret saw the em- 
bodiment of " the Italian wine, the Italian sun." 

In the course of this winter it became evident 
that the liberalism of Pio Nono would not stand 
the test of any extensive practical application. 
His position was, indeed, a very difficult one, the 
natural allies and supporters of the Papacy being, 
without exception, the nat;ural enemies of the 
new ideas to which he had so incautiously opened 
the door. 

Margaret relates various attempts made by 
Austrians in Lombardy and by Oscurantists in 
Rome to excite the people to overt acts of vio- 
lence, and thus gain a pretext for the employ- 
ment of armed force. In Rome, on New Year's 
day, an attempt of this sort was near succeed- 
ing, the governor of the city having ungraciously 
forbidden the people to wait upon the Pope at 
the Quirinal, and to ask for his blessing. For- 



MAZZmrS LETTER, 225 

tunately, instead of rising in rebellion, they be- 
took themselves to Senator Corsini, by whose 
friendly interposition the Pope was induced to 
make a progress through the city, interrupted 
only by the prayers of his subjects, who, falling 
on their knees as he passed, cried out : " Holy 
Father, don't desert us ! don't forget us ! don't 
listen to our enemies ! " the Pope, in tears, re- 
plying : "Fear nothing, my people; my heart 
is yours." And this tender-hearted populace, 
seeing that the Pope looked ill, and that the 
weather was inclement, begged him to return to 
the Quirinal, which he did, the popular leader, 
Ciceruacchio, following his carriage. 

A letter from Mazzini to Pope Pius, printed in 
Paris, had reached Italy by this time, and was 
translated by Margaret for publication in the 
" New York Tribune." Some passages of it 
will not be out of place here, as showing the 
position and outlook of a man by far the most 
illustrious of the Italian exiles, and one whose 
purity of life and excellence of character gave 
to his opinions a weight beyond their intellec- 
tual value. 

After introducing himself as one who adores 
God, Mazzini says that he adores, also, an idea 
which seems to him to be of God, that of Italy 
as "an angel of moral unity and of progressive 
civilization for the nations of Europe." 
15 



226 MARGARET FULLER. 

Having studied the great history of humanity, 
and having there found ** Rome twice directress 
of the world, first througli the Emperors, later 
through the Popes," he is led to believe that the 
great city is destined to a third and more lasting 
period of supremacy. 

" I believe that another European world ought 
to be revealed from the Eternal City, that had 
the Capitol and has the Vatican. And this faith 
has not abandoned me through years, poverty, 
and griefs which God alone knows." 

One cannot help pausing here to reflect that 
in both historic instances the supremacy of 
Rome was due to a superiority of civilization 
which she has long lost, and is not likely to re- 
gain in this day of the world. 

Mazzini says to the Pope : " There is no man 
this day in all Europe more powerful than you ; 
you then have, most Holy Father, vast duties." 

He now passes on to a review of the situa- 
tion : — 

" Europe is in a tremendous crisis of doubts 
and desires. Faith is dead. Catholicism is lost 
in despotism ; Protestantism is lost in anarchy. 
The intellect travels in a void. The bad adore 
calculation, physical good ; the good pray and 
hope ; nobody believes. . . . 

*' I call upon you, after so many ages of doubt 
and corruption, to be the apostle of eternal 



MAZZINVS LETTER. 22/ 

truth. I call upon you to make yourself the 
' servant of all ; ', to sacrifice yourself, if needful, 
so that the will of God may be done on earth as 
it is in heaven ; to hold yourself ready to glorify 
God in victory, or to repeat with resignation, if 
you must fail, the words of Gregory VII. : * I 
die in exile because I have loved justice and 
hated iniquity.' 

" But for this, to fulfil the mission which God 
confides to you, two things are needful, — to be 
a believer, and to unify Italy." 

The first of these two clauses is here amplified 
into an exhortation which, edifying in itself, had 
in it nothing likely to suggest to the person 
addressed any practical solution of the difficul- 
ties which surrounded him. 

Having shown the Head of Christendom the 
way to right belief, Mazzini next instructs him 
how to unify Italy: — 

" For this you have no need to work, but [only 
to] bless Him who works through you and in 
your name. Gather round you those who best 
represent the national party. Do not beg alli- 
ances with princes. Say, * The unity of Italy 
ought to be a fact of the nineteenth century,' 
and it will suffice. Leave our pens free ; leave 
free the circulation of ideas in what regards this 
point, vital for us, of the national unity." 

Here follow some special directions with re- 



228 MARGARET FULLER. 

gard to the several powers to be dealt with in the 
projected unification. The result of all this, fore- 
seen by Mazzini, would be the foundation of "a 
government unique in Europe, which shall de- 
stroy the absurd divorce between spiritual and 
temporal power, and in which you shall be chosen 
to represent the principle of which the men 
chosen by the nation will make the application." 

" The unity of Italy," says Mazzini, " is a work 
of God. It will be fulfilled, with you or without 
you. But I address you because I believe you 
worthy to take the initiative in a work so vast ; 
. . . because the revival of Italy, under the aegis 
of a religious idea of a standard, not of rights, 
but of duties, would leave behind all the revo- 
lutions of other countries, and place her imme- 
diately at the head of European progress." 

Pure and devout as are the sentiments uttered 
in this letter, the views which accompany them 
have been shown, by subsequent events, to be 
only partially just, only partially realizable. The 
unification of Italy may to-day be called "a work 
of God ; " but had it been accomplished on the 
theocratic basis imagined by Mazzini, it could 
not have led either Europe or Italy itself to the 
point now reached through manifold endeavor 
and experience. Spirits may be summoned from 
the upper air as well as from the " vasty deep," 
but they will not come until the time is ripe for 



BEAUTY OF THE SPRING. 229 

their work. And yet are prayer and prophecy of 
this sort sacred and indispensable functions in 
the priestliood of ideas. 

On March 29, 1848, Margaret is able to 
praise once more the beauty of the scene around 
her : — 

" Now the Italian heavens wear again their 
deep blue. The sun is glorious, the melancholy 
lustres are stealing again over the Campagna, 
and hundreds of larks sing unwearied above its 
ruins. Nature seems in sympathy with the great 
events that are transpiring." 

What were these events, which, Margaret 
says, stunned her by the rapidity and grandeur 
of their march ? 

The face of Italy was changed indeed. Sicily 
was in revolt, Naples in revolution. Milan, Ven- 
ice, Modena, and Parma were driving out their 
tyrants ; and in Rome, men and women were 
weeping and dancing for joy at the news. 
Abroad, Louis Philippe had lost his throne, and 
Metternich his power. Margaret saw the Aus- 
trian arms dragged through the streets, and 
burned in the Piazza del Popolo. " The Italians 
embraced pne another, and cried, Miracolo ! 
Providcnza ! The Tribune Ciceruacchio fed 
the flame with fagots. Adam Mickiewicz, the 
great poet of Poland, long exiled from his coun- 
try, looked on.'* The double-headed Austrian 



230 MARGARET FULLER. 

eagle was torn from the front of the Palazzo di 
Venezia, and in his place was set the inscription, 
" Alta Italia." By April ist the Austrian Vice- 
roy had capitulated at Verona, and Italy appeared 
to be, or was for the time, " free, independent, 
and one." 

Poor Pope Pius, meanwhile, had fallen more 
and more into the rear of the advancing move- 
ment, and finally kept step with it only as he was 
compelled to do, secretly looking for the moment 
when he should be able to break from the ranks 
which he himself had once led. On May 7th, 
Margaret writes of his " final dereliction to the 
cause of freedom," by which phrase she describes 
his refusal to declare war against Austria, after 
having himself done and approved of much 
which led in that direction. The position of 
the Pontiff was now most unhappy. Alarmed 
at the agitation and turmoil about him, it is 
probable that he bitterly regretted the acts in 
which he had been sincere, but of which he had 
not foreseen the consequences. Margaret de- 
scribes him as isolated in his palace, guided by 
his confessor, weak and treacherous in his move- 
ments, privately disowning the measures which 
the popular feeling compelled him to allow, and 
secretly doing his utmost to counteract them. 

In the month of May Margaret enjoyed some 
excursions into the environs of Rome. She vis- 



LEAVES ROME FOR AQUILA. 23 1 

ited Albano, Frascati, and Ostia, and passed 
some days at Subiaco and at Tivoli. On the 
28th of the same month she left Rome for the 
summer, and retired to Aquila, a Httle ruined 
town in the Abruzzi Mountains, where, after so 
many painful excitements, she hoped to find 
tranquillity and rest. 






CHAPTER XIV. 

Margaret's marriage. — character of the mar- 

chese ossoli. margaret's first meeting with 

him. — reasons for not divulging the mar- 
riage. aquila. rieti. birth of angelo 

EUGENE OSSOLI. — MARGAREt's RETURN TO ROME. 

HER ANXIETY ABOUT HER CHILD. — FLIGHT OF POPE 
PIUS. THE CONSTITUTIONAL ASSEMBLY. THE RO- 
MAN REPUBLIC. ATTITUDE OF FRANCE. — THE 

SIEGE OF ROME. MAZZINI. PRINCESS BELGIO- 

JOSO. MARGARET'S CARE OF THE HOSPITALS. 

The story of this summer in the mountains 
Margaret never told, and her letters of the pre- 
vious winter gave no account of matters most 
personal to herself. In continuing the narrative 
of her life, we are therefore obliged to break 
through the reserves of the moment, and to 
speak of events which, though occurring at this 
time, were not made known to her most intimate 
friends until a much later period. 

Margaret had been privately married for some 
months when she left Rome for Aquila. Her 
husband was a young Italian nobleman, Ossoli 



FIRST MEETING WITH OSSOLI. 233 

by name, whose exterior is thus described by one 
of her most valued friends ^ : — 

" He appeared to be of a reserved and gentle 
nature, with quiet, gentlemanlike manners ; and 
there was something melancholy in the expres- 
sion of his face which made one desire to know 
more of him. In figure he was tall, and of slen- 
der frame, with dark hair and eyes. We judged 
that he was about thirty years of age, possibly 
younger." 

Margaret had made the acquaintance of this 
gentleman during her first visit to Rome, in the 
spring of the year 1847, and under the following 
circumstances : She had gone with some friends 
to attend the vesper service at St. Peter's, and, 
wandering from one point of interest to another 
in the vast church, had lost sight of her party. 
All efforts to rejoin them proved useless, and 
Margaret was in some perplexity, when a young 
man of gentlemanly address accosted her, and 
asked leave to assist her in finding her friends. 
These had already left the church, and by the 
time that this became evident to Margaret and 
her unknown companion, the hour was late, and 
the carriages, which can usually be found in 
front of the church after service, had all disap- 
peared. Margaret was therefore obliged to walk 
from the Vatican to her lodgings on the Corso, 

1 Mrs. Story, wife of the eminent sculptor. 



234 MARGARET FULLER. 

accompanied by her new friend, with whom she 
was able at the time to exchange very little con- 
versation. Familiar as she was with Italian 
literature, the sound of the language was new to 
her, and its use difficult. 

The result of this chance meeting seems to 
have been love at first sight on the part of the 
Marchese Ossoli. Before Margaret left Rome 
he had offered her his hand, and had been 
refused. 

Margaret returned to Rome, as we have seen, 
in the autumn of the same year. Her acquaint- 
ance with the Marchese was now renewed, and 
with the advantage that she had become suffi- 
ciently familiar with the Italian language to con- 
verse in it with comparative ease. Her intense 
interest in the affairs of Italy suggested to him also 
ideas of " liberty and better government." His 
education, much neglected, as she thought, had 
been in the traditions of the narrowest conserva- 
tism ; but Margaret's influence led or enabled 
him to free himself from the trammels of old- 
time prejudice, and to espouse, with his whole 
heart, the cause of Roman liberty. 

According to the best authority extant, the 
marriage of Margaret and the Marchese took 
place in the December following her return to 
Rome. The father of the Marchese had died 
but a short time before this, and his estate, left 



REASONS FOR SECRECY. 235 

•n the hands of two other sons, was not yet set- 
tled. These gentlemen were both attached to 
the Papal household, and, we judge, to the reac- 
tionary party. The fear lest the Marchese's 
marriage with a Protestant should deprive him 
wholly, or in part, of his paternal inheritance, in- 
duced the newly married couple to keep to them- 
selves the secret of their relation to each other. 
At the moment, ecclesiastical influence would 
have be'en very likely, under such circumstances, 
to affect the legal action to be taken in the di- 
vision of the property. Better things were hoped 
for in view of a probable change of government. 
So the winter passed, and Margaret went to her 
retreat among the mountains, with her secret 
unguessed and probably unsuspected. 

Her husband was a member — perhaps already 
a captain — of the Civic Guard, and was detained 
in Rome by military duties. Margaret was 
therefore much alone in the midst of "a thea- 
tre of glorious, snow-crowned mountains, whose 
pedestals are garlanded with the olive and mul- 
berry, and along whose- sides run bridle-paths 
fringed with almond groves and vineyards." 
The scene was to her one of " intoxicating beau- 
ty," but the distance from her husband soon be- 
came more than she could bear. After a month 
passed in this place, she found a nearer retreat 
at Rieti, also a mountain-town, but within the 



236 MARGARET FULLER. 

confines of the Papal States. Here Ossoli could 
sometimes pass the Sunday with her, by travel- 
ling in the night. In one of her letters Mar- 
garet writes : " Do not fail to come. I shall 
have your coffee warm. You will arrive early, 
and I can see the diligence pass the bridge from 
my window." 

In the month of August the Civic Guard were 
ordered to prepare for a march to Bologna ; and 
Ossoli, writing to Margaret on the 17th, strongly 
expresses his unwillingness to be so far removed 
from her at a time in which she might have urgent 
need of his presence at any moment. For these 
were to her days of great hope and expectation. 
Her confinement was near at hand, and she 
was alone, poor and friendless, among people 
whose only aim was to plunder her. But Mar- 
garet could not, even in these trying circum- 
stances, belie the heroic principles which had 
always guided her life. She writes to her doubt- 
ing, almost despairing husband : " If honor re- 
quires it, go. I will try to sustain myself." 

This dreaded trial was averted. The march 
to Bologna was countermanded. Margaret's 
boy saw the light on the 5th of September, and 
the joyful presence of her husband soothed for 
her the pangs of a first maternity. 

He was indeed obliged to leave her the next day 
for Rome. Margaret was ill cared for, and lost, 



RETURN TO ROME. 237 

through a severe fever, the ability to nurse her 
child. She was forced to dismiss her only at- 
tendant, and to struggle in her helpless condition 
with the dishonesty and meanness of the people 
around her. A balia^ for the child was soon 
found, but Margaret felt the need of much cour- 
age in guarding the first days of her infant's life. 
In her eyes he grew " more beautiful every hour." 
The people in the house called him Angiolino, 
anticipating the name afterwards given him in 
baptism, — Angelo Eugene. 

She was soon to find a new trial in leaving 
him. Her husband still wished to keep his 
marriage a profound secret, and to this end 
desired that the baby should be left at Rieti. in 
charge of " a good nurse who should treat him 
like a mother." Margaret was most anxious to 
return to Rome, to be near her husband, and 
also in order to be able to carry on the literary 
labor upon which depended not only her own 
support, but also that of her child. 

Writing to Ossoli, she says : " I cannot stay 
long without seeing the boy. He is so dear, and 
life seems so uncertain. It is necessary that I 
should be in Rome a month at least, to write, 
and to be near you. But I must be free to re- 
turn here, if I feel too anxious and suffering for 
him." 

1 Wet-nurse. 



238 MARGARET FULLER, 

Early in November Margaret returned to 
Rome. In a letter to her mother, bearing the 
date of November 16, she says : — 

" I am again in Rome, situated for the first 
time entirely to my mind. ... I have the sun 
all day, and an excellent chimney. It [her lodg- 
ing] is very high, and has pure air, and the most 
beautiful view all around imaginable. . . . The 
house looks out on the Piazza Barberini, and I see 
both that palace and the Pope's [the Quirinal]." 

The assassination of the Minister Rossi had 
taken place on the previous day. Margaret de- 
scribes it almost as if she had seen it : — 

" The poor, weak Pope has fallen more and 
more under the dominion of the cardinals. He 
had suffered the Minister Rossi to go on, tight- 
ening the reins, and because the people pre- 
served a sullen silence, he thought they would 
bear it. . . . Rossi, after two or three most un- 
popular measures, had the imprudence to call 
the troops of the Hne to defend him, instead of 
the National Guard. . . . Yesterday, as he de- 
scended from his carriage to enter the Cham- 
ber [of Deputies], the crowd howled and hissed, 
then pushed him, and as he turned his head in 
consequence, a sure hand stabbed him in the 
back." 

On the morrow, the troops and the people united 
in calling upon the Pope, then at the Quirinal, 



PLIGHT OF POPE PIUS. 239 

for a change of measures. They found no 
audience, but only the hated Swiss mercenaries, 
who defeated an attempt to enter the palace by 
firing on the crowd. " The drum beat to call 
out the National Guard. The carriage of Prince 
Barberini has returned, with its frightened in- 
mates and liveried retinue, and they have sud- 
denly barred up the court-yard gate." Margaret 
felt no apprehension for herself in all this tur- 
moil. The side which had, for the moment, the 
upper hand, was her own, and these very days 
were such as she had longed for, not, we may be 
sure, for their accompaniments of bloodshed and 
violence, but for the outlook which was to her 
and her friends one of absolute promise. 

The " good time coming " did then seem to 
have come for Italy. Her various populations 
had risen against their respective tyrants, and 
had shown a disposition to forget past divisions 
in the joy of a country reconciled and united. 

In the principal churches of Rome, masses 
were performed in commemoration of the patri- 
otic men who fell at this time in various strug- 
gles with existing governments. Thus were 
honored the "victims" of Milan, of Naples, of 
Venice, of Vienna. 

Not long after the assassination of Rossi, the 
Pope, imploring the protection of the King of 
Naples, fled to Gaeta. 



240 MARGARET FULLER. 

'* No more of him," writes Margaret ; " his day 
is over. He has been made, it seems uncon- 
sciously, an instrument of good which his re- 
grets cannot destroy." 

The political consequences of this act were 
scarcely foreseen by the Romans, who, accord- 
ing to Margaret's account, remained quite cool 
and composed, saying only : " The Pope, the 
cardinals, the princes are gone, and Rome is 
perfectly tranquil. One does not miss anything, 
except that there are not so many rich carriages 
and liveries." 

In February Margaret chronicles the opening 
of the Constitutional Assembly, which was her- 
alded by a fine procession, with much display of 
banners. In this. Prince Canino, a nephew of 
Napoleon, walked side by side with Garibaldi, 
both having been chosen deputies. Margaret 
saw this from a balcony in the Piazza di Vene- 
zia, whose stern old palace ''seemed to frown, 
as the bands each, in passing, struck up the 
Marscillaiser On February gth the bells were 
rung in honor of the formation of a Roman Re- 
public. The next day Margaret went forth early, 
to observe the face of Rome. She saw the pro- 
cession of deputies mount the Campidoglio (Cap- 
itol), with the Guardia Civica for their escort. 
Here was promulgated the decree announcing 
the formation of the Republic, and guarantee- 



INTEREST IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 24I 

ing to the Pope the undisturbed exercise of his 
spiritual power. 

The Grand Duke of Tuscany now fled, smiling 
assent to liberal principles as he entered his 
carriage to depart. The King of Sardinia was 
naturally filled with alarm. *' It makes no dif- 
ference," says Margaret. " He and his minister, 
Gioberti, must go, unless foreign intervention 
should impede the liberal movement. In this 
case, the question is, what will France do ? 
Will she basely forfeit every pledge and every 
duty, to say nothing of her true interest?" 
Alas ! France was already sold to the coun- 
terfeit greatness of a name, and was pledged 
to a course irrational and vulgar beyond any 
that she had yet followed. The Roman Re- 
public, born of high hope and courage, had 
but few days to live, and those days were full 
of woe, 

Margaret had so made the life of Rome her 
own at this period, that we have found it impos- 
sible to describe the one without recounting 
something of the other. Her intense interest 
in public affairs could not, however, wean her 
thoughts from the little babe left at Rieti. 
Going thither in December, she passed a week 
with her darling, but was forced after this to re- 
main three months in Rome without seeing him. 
Here she lay awake whole nights, contriving how 
16 



242 MARGARET FULLER. 

she might end this painful separation ; but cir- 
cumstances were too strong for her, and the 
object so dearly wished for could not be com- 
passed. 

In March she visited him again, and found 
him in health, "and plump, though small." The 
baby leaned his head pathetically against her 
breast, seeming, she thought, to say, " How 
could you leave me "^ " He is described as a 
sensitive and precocious little creature, — af- 
fected, Margaret thought, by sympathy with 
her ; " for," she says, " I worked very hard be- 
fore his birth [at her book on Italy], with the 
hope that all my spirit might be incarnated in 
him." 

She returned to Rome about the middle of 
April. The French were already in Italy. Their 
" web of falsehood " was drawing closer and 
closer round the devoted city. Margaret was 
not able to visit her boy again until the siege, 
soon begun, ended in the downfall of the Roman 
Republic. 

The government of Rome, at this time, was 
in the hands of a triumvirate, whose names — 
Armellini, Mazzini, and Saffi — are appended to 
the official communications made in answer to 
the letters of the French Envoy, M. de Lesseps, 
and of the Commander-in-Chief, General Oudinot. 
The French side of this correspondence pre- 



PRINCESS BELGIOJOSO. 243 

sented but a series of tergiversations, the truth 
being simply that the opportunity of reinstating 
the Roman Pontiff in his temporal domain was 
too valuable to be allowed to pass, by the adven- 
turer who then, under the name of President, 
already ruled France by military despotism. In 
the great game of hazard which he played, the 
prospective adhesion of the Pope's spiritual sub- 
jects was the highest card he could hold. The 
people who had been ignorant enough to elect 
Louis Napoleon, were easily led to justify his 
outrageous expedition to Rome. 

In Margaret's manifold disappointments, Maz- 
zini always remained her ideal of a patriot, and, 
as she says, of a prince. To her, he stands alone 
in Italy, " on a sunny height, far above the stat- 
ure of other men." He came to her lodgings in 
Rome, and was in appearance " more divine than 
ever, after all his new, strange sufferings." He 
had then just been made a Roman citizen, and 
would in all probability have been made Presi- 
dent, had the Republic continued to exist. He 
talked long with Margaret, and, she says, was 
not sanguine as to the outcome of the difficulties 
of the moment. 

The city once invested, military hospitals be- 
came a necessity. The Princess Belgiojoso, a 
Milanese by birth, and in her day a social and 
political notability, undertook to organize these 



244 MARGARET FULLER. 

establishments, and obtained, by personal solici- 
tation, the funds necessary to begin her work. 
On the 30th of April, 1 849, she wrote the follow- 
ing letter to Margaret : — 

" Dear Miss Fuller, — You are named Su- 
perintendent of the Hospital of the Fate Bene 
FratellL Go there at twelve, if the alarm-bell 
has not rung before. When you arrive there, 
you will receive all the women coming for the 
wounded, and give them your directions, so that 
you are sure to have a number of them, night 
and day. 

"' May God help us ! 

'* Christine Trivulze, of Belgiojoso." 



CHAPTER XV. 

SIEGE OF ROME. — MARGARET'S CARE OF THE SICK 

AND WOUNDED. ANXIETY ABOUT HER HUSBAND 

AND CHILD. BATTLE BETWEEN THE FRENCH AND 

ITALIAN TROOPS. THE SURRENDER. — GARIBAL- 

Dl'S DEPARTURE. MARGARET JOINS HER HUSBAND 

AT HIS POST. ANGELO'S ILLNESS. LETTERS 

FROM FRIENDS IN AMERICA.-— PERUGIA. WINTER 

IN FLORENCE. — MARGARET'S DOMESTIC LIFE. AS- 
PECT OF HER FUTURE. HER COURAGE AND INDUS- 
TRY. OSSOLI'S AFFECTION FOR HER. WILLIAM 

HENRY HURLBUT'S REMINISCENCES OF THEM BOTH. 
LAST DAYS IN FLORENCE. FAREWELL VISIT TO 

THE DUOMO. — Margaret's evenings at home. — 

HORACE SUMNER. MARGARET AS A FRIEND OF THE 

PEOPLE. 

Margaret writes to Mr. Emerson in June : 
" Since the 30th of April I go almost daily to 
the hospitals, and, though I have suffered, for I 
had no idea before how terrible gun-shot wounds 
and wound-fever are, yet I have taken great pleas- 
ure in being with the men. There is scarcely 
one who is not moved by a noble spirit." 

" Night and day," writes the friend cited above,^ 
" Margaret was occupied, and, with the Princess, 

} Mrs. Story. 



246 MARGARET FULLER. 

so ordered and disposed the hospitals that their 
conduct was admirable. Of money they had 
very little, and they \yere obliged to give their 
time and thoughts in its place. I have walked 
through the wards with Margaret, and have 
seen how comforting was her presence to the 
poor suffering men. For each one's peculiar 
tastes she had a care. To one she carried 
books ; to another she told the news of the day ;- 
and listened to another's oft-repeated tale of 
wrongs, as the best sympathy she could give. 
They raised themselves on their elbows to get 
the last glimpse of her" as she went her way. 

Ossoli, meanwhile, was stationed, with his 
command, on the walls of the Vatican, — a post 
of considerable danger. This he refused to leave, 
even for necessary food and rest. The provis- 
ions sent him from time to time were shared 
with his needy comrades. As these men were 
brought, wounded and dying, to the hospitals, 
Margaret looked eagerly to see whether her hus- 
band was among them. She was able, some- 
times, to visit him at his post, and to talk with 
him about the beloved child, now completely 
beyond their reach, as the city was invested on 
all sides, and no sure means of communication 
open to them. They remained for many days 
without any news of the little one, and their 
first intelligence concerning him was to the 



SIEGE OF ROME. 247 

effect that the nurse with whom he had been 
left would at once abandon him unless a certain 
sum of money should be sent in prepayment of 
her services. This it seemed at first impossible 
to do ; but after a while the money was sent, and 
the evil day adjourned for a time. 

Margaret's letters of the lOth of June speak 
of a terrible battle recently fought between the 
French troops and the defenders of Rome. The 
Italians, she says, fought like lions, making a 
stand for honor and conscience' sake, with 
scarcely any prospect of success. The attack 
of the enemy was directed with a skill and 
order which Margaret was compelled to admire. 
The loss on both sides was heavy, and the as- 
sailants, for the moment, gained " no inch of 
ground." But this was only the beginning of 
the dread trial. By the 20th of June the bom- 
bardment had become heavy. On the night 
of the 2 1st a practicable breach v/as made, and 
the French were within the city. The defence, 
however, was valiantly continued until the 30th, 
when Garibaldi informed the Assembly that 
further resistance would be useless. Conditions 
of surrender were then asked for and refused. 
Garibaldi himself was denied a safe-conduct, and 
departed with his troops augmented by a num- 
ber of soldiers from other regiments. This was 
on July 2d, after it became known that the 



248 MARGARET FULLER. 

French army would take possession on the mor- 
row. Margaret followed the departing troops 
as far as the Place of St. John Lateran. Never 
had she seen a sight " so beautiful, so romantic, 
and so sad." 

The grand piazza had once been the scene of 
Rienzi's triumph : *' The sun was setting, the 
crescent moon rising, the flower of the Italian 
youth were marshalling in that solemn place. 
They had all put on the beautiful dress of the 
Garibaldi legion, — the tunic of bright red cloth, 
the Greek cap, or round hat with puritan plume. 
Their long hair was blown back from resolute 
faces. ... I saw the wounded, all that could 
go, laden upon their baggage-cars. I saw many 
youths, born to rich inheritance, carrying in a 
handkerchief all their worldly goods. The wife 
of Garibaldi followed him on horseback. He 
himself was distinguished by the white tunic. 
His look was entirely that of a hero of the 
Middle Ages, — his face still young. . . . He 
went upon the parapet, and looked upon the 
road with a spy-glass, and, no obstruction being 
in sight, he turned his face for a moment back 
upon Rome, then led the way through the gate." 

Thus ended the heroic defence of Rome. 
The French occupation began on the next day, 
with martial law and the end of all liberties. 
Alas ! that it was not given to Margaret to 



DISCLOSURE OF HER MARRIAGE. 249 

see Garibaldi come again, with the laurels of 
an abiding victory! Alas ! that she saw not the 
end of the Napoleon game, and the punishment 
of France for her act of insensate folly ! 

It was during these days of fearful trial and 
anxiety that Margaret confided to Mrs. Story 
the secret of her marriage. This was done, not 
for the relief of her own overtasked feelings, 
but in the interest of her child, liable at this 
time to be left friendless by the death of his 
parents. Margaret, in her extreme anxiety con- 
cerning her husband's safety, became so ill and 
feeble that the duration of her own life ap- 
peared to her very uncertain. In a moment of 
great depression she called Mrs. Story to her 
bedside, related to her all the antecedents of the 
birth of the child, and showed her, among other 
papers, the certificate of her marriage, and of her 
son's legal right to inherit the title and estate of 
his father. These papers she intrusted to Mrs. 
Story's care, requesting her, in case of her own 
death, to seek her boy at Rieti, and to convey 
him to her friends in America. 
■ To Lewis Cass, at that time American Envoy 
to the Papal Court, the same secret was confided, 
and under circumstances still more trying. 
Shortly before the conclusion of the siege, Mar- 
garet learned that an attack would probably be 
made upon the very part of the city in which 



250 MARGARET FULLER. 

Ossoli was stationed with his men. She accord- 
ingly sent to request that Mr. Cass would call 
upon her at once, which he did. He found her 
"lying on a sofa, pale and trembling, evidently 
much exhausted." After informing "him of her 
marriage, and of the birth and whereabouts of 
her child, she confided to his care certain im- 
portant documents, to be sent, in the event of 
her death, to her family in America. Her hus- 
band was, at that very moment, in command of 
a battery directly exposed to the fire of the 
French artillery. The night before had been 
one of great danger to him, and Margaret, in 
view of his almost certain death, had determined 
to pass the coming night at his post with him, 
and to share his fate, whatever it might be. He 
had promised to come for her at the Ave Maria, 
and Mr. Cass, departing, met him at the porter's 
lodge, and shortly afterward beheld them walk- 
ing in the direction of his command. It turned 
out that the threatened danger did not visit 
them. The cannonading from this point was 
not renewed, and on the morrow military opera- 
tions were at an end. 

Among our few pictures of Margaret and her 
husband, how characteristic is this one, of the 
pair walking side by side into the very jaws of 
death, with the glory of faith and courage bright 
about them ! 



ANGELO'S ILLNESS. 25 1 

The gates once open, Margaret's first thought 
was of Rieti, and her boy there. Thither she 
sped without delay, arriving just in time to save 
the life of the neglected and forsaken child, 
whose wicked nurse, uncertain of further pay- 
ment, had indeed abandoned him. His mother 
found him " worn to a skeleton, too weak to 
•smile, or lift his little wasted hand." Four 
weeks of incessant care and nursing brought, 
still in wan feebleness, his first returning smile. 

All that Margaret had already endured seemed 
to her light in comparison with this. In the 
Papal States, woman had clearly fallen behind 
even the standard of the she-wolf. 

After these painful excitements came a season 
of blessed quietness for Margaret and her dear 
ones. Angelo regained his infant graces, and 
became full of life and of baby glee. Margaret's 
marriage was suitably acknowledged, and the 
pain and trouble of such a concealment were 
at end. The disclosure of the relation naturally 
excited much comment in Italy and in America. 
In both countries there were some, no doubt, 
who chose to interpret this unexpected action 
on the part of Margaret in a manner utterly at 
variance with the whole tenor and spirit of her 
life. The general feeling was, however, quite 
otherwise ; and it is gratifying to find that, while 
no one could have considered Margaret's mar- 



252 MARGARET FULLER. 

riage an act of worldly wisdom, it was very gen- 
erally accepted by her friends as only another 
instance of the romantic disinterestedness which 
had always been a leading trait in her character. 

Writing to an intimate friend in America, 
she remarks : " What you say of the meddling 
curiosity of people repels me ; it is so different 
here. When I made my appearance with a hus- 
band, and a child of a year old, nobody did the 
least act to annoy me. All were most cordial ; 
none asked or implied questions." 

She had already written to Madame Arconati, 
asking whether the fact of her concealed mar- 
riage and motherhood would make any differ- 
ence in their relations. Her friend, a lady of 
the highest position and character, replied : 
"What difference can it make, except that I 
shall love you more, now that we can sympa- 
thize as mothers .'' " 

In other letters, Margaret speaks of the lov- 
ing sympathy expressed for her by relatives 
in America. The attitude of her brothers was 
such as she had rightly expected it to be. Her 
mother received the communication in the high- 
est spirit, feeling assured that a leading motive 
in Margaret's withholding of confidence from her 
had been the desire to spare her a season of 
most painful anxiety. Speaking of a letter re- 
cently received from her, Margaret says : — 



WINTER IN FLORENCE. 253 

" She blessed ns. She rejoiced that she 
should not die feeling there was no one left 
to love me with the devotion she thought I 
needed. She expressed no regret at our pov- 
erty, but offered her feeble means." 

After a stay of some weeks at Rieti, Margaret, 
with her husband and child, journeyed to Peru- 
gia, and thence to Florence. At the former 
place she remained long enough to read D' Aze- 
glio's " Nicolo dei Lapi," which she esteemed "a 
book unenlivened by a spark of genius, but inter- 
esting as illustrative of Florence." Here she felt 
that she understood, for the first time, the depth 
and tenderness of the Umbrian school. 

The party reached Florence late in Septem- 
ber, and were soon established in lodgings for 
the winter. The police at first made some ob- 
jection to their remaining in the city, but this 
^ matter was soon settled to their satisfaction. 
Margaret's thoughts now turned toward her ow^n 
country and her own people : — 

"It will be sad to leave Italy, uncertain of 
return. Yet when I think of you, beloved 
mother, of brothers and sisters and many 
friends, I wish to come. Ossoli is perfectly 
willing. He will go among strangers ; but to 
him, as to all the young Italians, America seems 
the land of liberty." 

Margaret's home-letters give lovely glimpses 



254 MARGARET FULLER, 

of this season of peace. Her modest establish- 
ment was served by Angelo's nurse, with a little 
occasional aid from the porter's wife. The boy 
himself was now in rosy health ; as his mother 
says, "a very gay, impetuous, ardent, but sweet- 
tempered child." She describes with a mother's 
delight his visit to her room at first waking, 
when he pulls her curtain aside, and goes 
through his pretty routine of baby tricks for her 
amusement, — laughing, crowing, imitating the 
sound of the bellows, and even saying '' Bravo ! " 
Then comes his bath, which she herself gives 
him, and then his walk and mid-day sleep. 

" I feel so refreshed by his young life, and 
Ossoli diffuses such a power and sweetness over 
every day, that I cannot endure to think yet of 
our future. We have resolved to enjoy being 
together as much as we can in this brief interval, 
perhaps all we shall ever know of peace. I re- 
joice in all that Ossoli did (in the interest of the 
liberal party) ; but the results are disastrous, 
especially as my strength is now so impaired. 
This much I hope, in life or death, to be no more 
separated from Angelo." 

Margaret's future did indeed look to her full of 
difficult duties. At forty years of age, having 
labored all her life for her father's family, she 
was to begin a new struggle for her own. She 
had looked this necessity bravely in the face, and 



COURAGE AND WDUSTRY. 255 

with resolute hand had worked at a history of 
recent events in Italy, hoping thus to make a 
start in the second act of her life-work. The 
two volumes which she had completed by this 
time seemed to her impaired in value by the 
intense, personal suffering which had lain like 
a weight upon her. Such leisure as the care of 
Angelo left her, while in Florence, was employed 
in the continuation of this work, whose loss we 
deplore the more for the intense personal feehng 
which must have throbbed through its pages. 
Margaret had hoped to pass this winter without 
any enforced literary labor, learning of her child, 
as she wisely says, and as no doubt she did, 
whatever else she may have found it necessary 
to do. In the chronicle of her days he plays 
an important part, his baby laugh *' all dimples 
and glitter," his contentment in the fair scene 
about him when, carried to the Casciney he lies 
back in her arms, smiling, singing to himself, 
and moving his tiny feet. The Christmas holi- 
days are dearer to her than ever before, for his 
sake. In the evening, before the bright little 
fire, he sits on his stool between father and 
mother, reminding Margaret of the days in 
which she had been so seated between her own 
parents. He is to her *' a source of ineffable 
joys, far purer, deeper, than anything I ever 
felt before." 



256 MARGARET FULLER. 

As Margaret's husband was destined to re- 
main a tradition only to the greater number of 
her friends, the hints and outlines of him given 
here and there in her letters are important, in 
showing us what companionship she had gained 
in return for her great sacrifice. 

Ossoli seems to have belonged to a type of 
character the very opposite of that which Mar- 
garet had best known and most admired. To 
one wearied with the over-intellection and rest- 
less aspiration of the accomplished New Eng- 
lander of that time, the simple geniality of the 
Italian nature had all the charm of novelty and 
contrast. Margaret had delighted in the race 
from her first acquaintance with it, but had 
found its happy endowments heavily weighted 
with traits of meanness and ferocity. In her 
husband she found its most worthy features, and 
her heart, wearied with long seeking and wan- 
dering, rested at last in the confidence of a 
simple and faithful attachment. 

She writes from Florence : " My love for 
Ossoli is most pure and tender ; nor has any 
one, except my mother or little children, loved 
me so genuinely as he does. To some, I have 
been obliged to make myself known. Others 
have loved me with a mixture of fancy and en- 
thusiasm, excited at my talent of embellishing 
life. But Ossoli loves me from simple affinity ; 



MR. HURLBUTS REMINISCENCES. 257 

he loves to be with me, and to serve and soothe 
me," 

And in another letter she says : " Ossoli will 
be a good father. He has very little of what is 
called intellectual development, but has unspoiled 
instincts, affections pure and constant, and a quiet 
sense of duty which, to me who have seen much 
of the great faults in characters of enthusiasm 
and genius, seems of highest value." 

Some reminiscences contributed by the ac- 
complished litterateur, William Henry Hurlbut, 
will help to complete the dim portrait of the 
Marchese : — 

" The frank and simple recognition of his 
wife's singular nobleness, which he always dis- 
played, was the best evidence that his own na- 
ture was of a fine and noble strain. And those 
who knew him best are, I believe, unanimous in 
testifying that his character did in no respect 
belie the evidence borne by his manly and truth- 
ful countenance to its warmth and sincerity. 
He seemed quite absorbed in his wife and child. 
I cannot remember ever to have found Madame 
Ossoli alone, on the evenings when she remained 
at home." 

Mr. Hurlbut says further: "Notwithstanding 

his general reserve and curtness of speech, on 

two or three occasions he showed himself to 

possess quite a quick and vivid fancy, and even a 

17 



258 MARGARET FULLER. 

certain share of humor. I have heard him tell 
stories remarkably well. One tale especially, 
which related to a dream he had in early life, I 
remember as being told with great felicity and 
vivacity of expression." 

Though opposed, like all liberals, to the eccle- 
siastical government of Rome, the Marchese 
appeared to Mr. Hurlbut a devout Catholic. He 
often attended vesper services in Florence, and 
Margaret, unwavering in her Protestantism, still 
found it sweet to kneel by his side. 

Margaret read, this winter, Louis Blanc's 
** Story of Ten Years," and Lamartine's " Gi- 
rondists." Her days were divided between fam- 
ily cares and her literary work, which for the 
time consisted in recording her impressions of 
recent events. She sometimes passed an even- 
ing at the rooms occupied by the Mozier and 
Chapman families, where the Americans then 
resident in Florence were often gathered to- 
gether. She met Mr. and Mrs. Browning often, 
and with great pleasure. The Marchesa Arconati 
she saw almost daily. 

One of Margaret's last descriptions is of the 
Duomo,^ which she visited with her husband on 
Christmas eve : — 

" No one was there. Only the altars were lit 
up, and the priests, who were singmg, could not 

1 Cathedral. 



FAREWELL VISIT TO THE DUOMO. 259 

be seen by the faint light. The vast solemnity 
of the interior is thus really felt. The Duomo 
is more divine than St. Peter's, and worthy of 
genius pure and unbroken. St. Peter's is, Jike 
Rome, a mixture of sublimest heaven with cor- 
ruptest earth. I adore the Duomo, though no 
place can now be to me like St. Peter's, where 
has been passed the splendidest part of my 
life." 

Thus looked to her, in remembrance, the spot 
where she had first met her husband, where she 
had shared his heroic vigils, and stood beside 
him within reach of death. 

The little household suffered some inconven- 
ience before the winter was over. By the mid- 
dle of December the weather became severely 
cold, and Margaret once more experienced the 
inconvenience of ordinary lodgings in Italy, in 
which the means of heating the rooms are very 
limited. The baby grew impatient of confine- 
ment, and constantly pointed to the door, which 
he was not allowed to pass. Of their several 
rooms, one only was comfortable under these 
circumstances. Of this, as occupied in the 
winter evenings, Mr. Hurlbut has given a 
pleasant description : -- 

"A small, square room, sparingly yet suffi- 
ciently furnished, with polished floor and fres- 
coed ceiling ; and, drawn up closely before the 



26o MARGARET FULLER. 

cheerful fire, an oval table, on which stood a 
monkish lamp of brass, with depending chains 
that support quaint classic cups for the olive oil. 
There, seated beside his wife, I was sure to find 
the Marchese, reading from some patriotic book, 
and dressed in the dark brown, red-corded coat 
of the Guardia Civica, which it was his melan- 
choly pleasure to wear at home. So long as the 
conversation could be carried on in Italian, he 
used to remain, though he rarely joined in it to 
any considerable degree. If many forestieri^ 
chanced to drop in, he betook himself to 
a neighboring cafe, — not absenting himself 
through aversion to such visitors, but in the 
fear lest his silent presence might weigh upon 
them." 

To complete the picture here given of the 
Ossoli interior, we should mention Horace, the 
youngest brother of Charles Sumner, who was a 
daily visitor in this abode of peace. Margaret 
says of him : " He has solid good in his mind 
and heart. . . When I am ill, or in a hurry, he 
helps me like a brother. Ossoli and Sum- 
ner exchange some instruction in English and 
Italian." 

This young man, remembered by those who 
knew him as most amiable and estimabl-e, was 
abroad at this time for his health, and passed 

1 Foreigners. 



INTERCOURSE WITH THE PEOPLE. 261 

the winter in Florence. Mr. Hurlbiit tells us 
that he brought Margaret, every morning, his 
tribute of fresh wild flowers, and that every 
evening, " beside her seat in her httife room, his 
mild, pure face was to be seen, bright with a 
quiet happiness," which was in part derived 
from her kindness and sympathy. 

This brief chronicle of Margaret's last days in 
Italy would be incomplete without a few words 
concerning the enviable position which she had 
made for herself in this country of her adop- 
tion. 

The way in which the intelligence of her 
marriage was received by her country-people in 
Rome and Florence gives the strongest proof 
of the great esteem in which they were con- 
strained to hold her. Equally honorable to her 
was the friendship of Madame Arconati, a lady 
of high rank and higher merit, beloved and 
revered as few were in the Milan of that day. 
She was the friend of Joseph Mazzini, and 
shared with George Sand and Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning the honors of prominence in the lib- 
eral movement and aspiration of the time. But 
it is in her intercourse with the people at large 
that we shall find the deepest evidence of her 
true humanity. Hers was no barren creed, 
divorced from beneficent action. The wounded 
soldiers in the hospital, the rude peasants of 



262 MARGARET FULLER. 

Rieti, knew her heart, and thought of her as " a 
mild saint and ministering angel." ^ Ferocious 
and grasping as these peasants were, she was 
able to overcome for the time their savage in- 
stincts, and to turn the tide of their ungoverned 
passions. 

In this place, two brothers were one day saved 
from the guilt of fratricide by her calm and firm 
intervention. Both of the men were furiously 
angry, and blood had already been drawn by the 
knife of one, when she stepped between them, 
and so reasoned and insisted, that the weapons 
were presently flung away, and the feud healed 
by a fraternal embrace. After this occurrence, 
the American lady was recognized as a peace- 
maker, and differences of various sorts were 
referred to her for settlement, much as domestic 
and personal difficulties had been submitted to 
her in her own New England. 

Among the troubles brought under her notice 
at Rieti were the constant annoyances caused 
by the lawless behavior of a number of Spanish 
troops who happened to be quartered upon the 
town. Between these and the villagers she suc- 
ceeded in keeping the peace by means of good 
counsel and enforced patience. In Florence 
she seems to have been equally beloved and re- 
spected. A quarrel here took place between 

1 Mrs. Story's reminiscences. 



INTERCOURSE WITH THE PEOPLE. 26^ 

her maid, from Rieti, and a fellow-lodger, in 
which her earnest effort prevented bloodshed, 
and effectually healed the breach between the 
two women. The porter of the house in which 
she dwelt while in Florence was slowly dying of 
consumption ; Margaret's kindness so attached 
him to her that he always spoke of her as la 
cara signora. 

The unruly Garibaldi Legion overtook Marga- 
ret one day between Rome and Rieti. She had 
been to visit her child at the latter place, and 
was returning to Rome alone in a vettura. While 
she was resting for an hour at a wayside inn, the 
master of the house entered in great alarm, cry- 
ing : " We are lost ! Here is the Legion Gari- 
baldi ! These men always pillage, and, if we do 
not give all up to them without pay, they will 
kill us." Looking out upon the road, Margaret 
saw that the men so much dreaded were indeed 
close at hand. For a moment she felt some 
alarm, thinking that they might insist upon tak-' 
ing the horses from her carriage, and thus render 
it impossible for her to proceed on her journey. 
Another moment, and she had found a device to 
touch their better nature. As the troop entered, 
noisy and disorderly, Margaret rose and said to 
the innkeeper: "Give these good men bread 
and wine at my expense, for after their ride they 
must need refreshment." The men at once be- 



. 54 MARGARET FULLER. 

came quiet and respectful. They partook of 
the offered hospitality with the best grace, and 
at parting escorted her to her carriage, and 
took leave of her with great deference. She 
drove off, wondering at their bad reputation. 
They probably were equally astonished at her 
dignity and friendliness. 

The statements of Margaret's friends touch 
us with their account of the charities which this 
poor woman was able to afford through economy 
and self-sacrifice. When she allowed herself 
only the bare necessaries of living and diet, she 
could have the courage to lend fifty dollars to 
an artist whom she deemed poorer than herself 
Rich indeed was this generous heart, to an 
extent undreamed of by wealthy collectors and 
pleasure-seekers. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

,i;argaret turns her face homeward. — last let- 

ter to her mother. the barque " elizabeth." 

presages and omens. death of the cap- 
tain. angelo's illness. the wreck. the 

long struggle. the end. final estimate of 

Margaret's character. 

Return to her own country now lay immedi- 
ately before Margaret. In the land of her adop- 
tion the struggle for freedom had failed, and no 
human foresight could have predicted the period 
of its renewal. Europe had cried out, like the 
sluggard on his bed : " You have waked me too 
soon ; I must slumber again." 

Margaret's delight in the new beauties and 
resources unfolded to her in various European 
countries, and especially in Italy, had made the 
thought of this return unwelcome to her. But 
now that free thought had become contraband 
in the beautiful land, where should she carry her 
high-hearted hopes, if not westward, with the 
tide of the true empire that shall grow out of 
man's conquest of his own brute passions } 

This holy westward way, found of Columbus, 
broadened and brightened by the Pilgrims, and 



266 MARGARET FULLER. 

become an ocean highway for the nations of the 
earth, lay open to her. From its farther end 
came to her the loving voices of kindred, and 
friends of youth. There she, a mother, could 
*' show her babe, and make her boast," to a 
mother of her own. There brothers, trained to 
noble manhood through her care and labor, could 
rise up to requite something of what they owed 
her. There she could tell the story of her Italy, 
with the chance of a good hearing. There, where 
she had sown most precious seed in the field of 
the younger generations, she would find some 
sheaves to bind for her own heart-harvest. 

And so the last days in Florence came. The 
vessel was chosen, and the day of sailing fixed 
upon. Margaret's last letter, addressed to her 
mother, is dated on the 14th of May. 

We read it now with a weight of sorrow which 
was hidden from her. In the light of what after- 
wards took place, it has the sweet solemnity 
of a greeting sent from the borders of another 
world. 

*' Florence, May 14, 1850. 

'* I will believe I shall be welcome with my 
treasures, — my husband and child. For me, I 
long so much to see you ! Should anything 
hinder our meeting upon earth, think of your 
daughter as one who always wished, at least, 
to do her duty, and who always cherished 



LAST LETTER TO HER MOTHER. 267 

you, according as her mind opened to discover 
excellence. 

" Give dear love, too, to my brothers ; and first, 
to my eldest, faithful friend, Eugene ; a sister's 
love to Ellen ; love to my kind and good aunts, 
and to my dear cousin E . God bless them ! 

*' I hope we shall be able to pass some time 
together yet, in this world. But, if God decrees 
otherwise, here and hereafter, my dearest mother, 
" Your loving child, 

" Margaret." 

Who is there that reads twice a sorrowful 
story without entertaining an unreasonable hope 
that its ending may change in the reperusal ? So 
does one return to the fate of " Paul and Vir- 
ginia," so to that of the '' Bride of Lammermoor." 
So, even in the wild tragedy of *' Othello," seen 
for the hundredth time, one still sees a way 
of escape for the victim ; still, in imagination, 
implores her to follow it. And when repeated 
representation has made assurance doubly sure, 
we yield to the mandate which none can resist, 
once issued, and say, " It was to be." 

This unreasonable struggle renews itself with- 
in us as we follow the narrative of Margaret's 
departure for her native land. Why did she 
choose a merchant vessel from Leghorn } why 
one which was destined to carry in its hold 



268 MARGARET FULLER. 

the heavy marble of Powers's Greek Slave ? 
She was warned against this, was uncertain 
in her own mind, and disturbed by presages of 
ill. But economy was very necessary to her at 
the moment. The vessel chosen, the barque 
" Elizabeth," was new, strong, and ably com- 
manded. Margaret had seen and made friends 
with the captain, Hasty by name, and his wife. 
Horace Sumner was to be their fellow-passenger, 
and a young Italian girl, Celeste Paolini, engaged 
to help in the care of the little boy. These con- 
siderations carried the day. 

Just before leaving Florence, Margaret re- 
ceived letters the tenor of which would have 
enabled her to remain longer in Italy. Ossoli 
remembered the warning of a fortune-teller, 
who in his childhood had told him to beware of 
the sea. Margaret wrote of omens which gave 
her " a dark feeling." She had " a vague ex- 
pectation of some crisis," she knows not what ; 
and this year, 1850, had long appeared to her a 
period of pause in the ascent of life, a point at 
which she should stand, as "on a plateau, and 
take more clear and commanding views than ever 
before." She prays fervently that she may not 
lose her boy at sea, "either by unsolaced illness, 
or amid the howling waves ; or if so, that Ossoli, 
Angelo, and I may go together, and that the 
anguish may be brief." 



ANGELAS ILLNESS. 269 

These presentiments, strangely prophetic, re- 
turned upon Margaret with so much force that 
on the very day appointed for sailing, the 17th 
of May, she stood at bay before them for an 
hour, unable to decide whether she should go 
or stay. But she had appointed a general meet- 
ing with her family in July, and had positively 
engaged her passage in the barque. Fidelity to 
these engagements prevailed with her. She 
may have felt, too, the danger of being gov- 
erned by vague forebodings which, shunning 
death in one form, often invite it in another. 
And so, in spite of fears and omens, too well 
justified in the sequel, she went on board, and 
the voyage began in smooth tranquillity. 

The first days at sea passed quietly enough. 
The boy played on the deck, or was carried 
about by the captain. Margaret and her hus- 
band suffered little inconvenience from sea- 
sickness, and were soon walking together in the 
limited space of their floating home. But pres- 
ently the good captain fell ill with small-pox 
of a malignant type. On June 3d the barque 
anchored off Gibraltar, the commander breathed 
his last, and was accorded a seaman's burial, in 
the sea. Here the ship suffered a detention 
of some days from unfavorable winds, but on 
the 9th was able to proceed on her way; and 
two days later Angelo showed symptoms of the 



270 MARGARET FULLER. 

dreadful disease, which visited him severely. 
His eyes were closed, his head swollen, his body 
disfigured by the accompanying eruption. Mar- 
garet and Ossoli, strangers to the disease, hung 
over their darling, and nursed him so tenderly 
that he was in due time restored, not only to 
health, but also to his baby beauty, so much 
prized by his mother. 

Margaret wrote from Gibraltar, describing the 
captain's illness and death, and giving a graphic 
picture of his ocean funeral. She did not at 
the time foresee Angelo's illness, but knew that 
he might easily have taken the infection. Re- 
lieved from this painful anxiety, the routine of 
the voyage re-established itself. Ossoli and 
Sumner continued to instruct each other in their 
respective languages. The baby became the 
pet and delight of the sailors. Margaret was 
busy with her book on Italy, but found time to 
soothe and comfort the disconsolate widow of 
the captain after her own availing fashion. Thus 
passed the summer days at sea. On Thursday, 
July 1 8th, the "Elizabeth" was. off the Jersey 
coast, in thick weather, the wind blowing east of 
south. The former mate was now the captain. 
Wishing to avoid the coast, he sailed east-north- 
east, thinking presently to take a pilot, and pass 
Sandy Hook by favor of the wind. 

At night he promised his passengers an early 



A DANGEROUS STORM. 2/1 

arrival in New York. They retired to rest in 
good spirits, having previously made all the 
usual preparations for going on shore. 

By nine o'clock that evening the breeze had 
become a gale, by midnight a dangerous storm. 
The commander, casting the lead from time to 
time, was without apprehension, having, it is 
supposed, mistaken his locality, and miscal- 
culated the speed of the vessel, which, under 
close-reefed sails, was nearing the sand-bars of 
Long Island. Here, on Fire Island beach, she 
struck, at four o'clock on the morning of July 
19th. The main and mizzen masts were promptly 
cut away, but the heavy marble had broken 
through the hold, and the waters rushed in. The 
bow of the vessel stuck fast in the sand, her 
stern swung around, and she lay with her broad- 
side exposed to the breakers, which swept over 
her with each returning rise, — a wreck to be 
saved by no human power. 

The passengers sprang from their berths, 
aroused by the dreadful shock, and guessing but 
too well its import. Then came the crash of the 
falling masts, the roar of the waves, as they shat- 
tered the cabin skyhght and poured down into the 
cabin, extinguishing the lights. These features 
of the moment are related as recalled by Mrs. 
Hasty, sole survivor of the passengers. One 
scream only was heard from Margaret's state- 



2/2 MARGARET FULLER. 

room. Mrs. Hasty and Horace Sumner met in 
the cabin and clasped hands. " We must' die ! " 
was his exclamation. " Let us die calmly," said 
the resolute woman. " I hope so," answered he. 
The leeward side of the cabin was already under 
water, but its windward side still gave shelter, 
and here, for three hours, the passengers took 
refuge, their feet braced against the long table. 
The baby shrieked, as well he might, with the 
sudden fright, the noise and chill of the water. 
But his mother wrapped him as warmly as she 
could, and in her agony cradled him on her 
bosom and sang him to sleep. The girl Celeste 
was beside herself with terror ; and here we find 
recorded a touching trait of Ossoli, who soothed 
her with encouraging words, and touched all 
hearts with his fervent prayer. In the calm of 
resignation they now sat conversing with each 
other, devising last messages to friends, to be 
given by any one of them who might survive 
the wreck. 

The crew had retired to the top-gallant fore- 
castle, and the passengers, hearing nothing of 
them, supposed them to have left the ship. By 
seven o'clock it became evident that the cabin 
could not hold together much longer, and Mrs. 
Hasty, looking from the door for some way of 
escape, saw a figure standing by the foremast, 
the space between being constantly swept by the 



THE WRECK, 2/3 

waves. She tried in vain to make herself heard ; 
but the mate, Davis, coming to the door of the 
forecastle, saw her, and immediately ordered the 
men to go to her assistance. So great. was 
the danger of doing this, that only two of the 
crew were willing to accompany him. The only 
refuge for the passengers was now in the fore- 
castle, which, from its position and strength of 
construction, would be likely to resist longest 
the violence of the waves. By great effort and* 
coolness the mate and his two companions 
reached the cabin, and rescued all in it from 
the destruction so nearly impending. Mrs. 
Hasty was the first to make the perilous at- 
tempt. She was washed into the hatchway, 
and besought the brave Davis to leave her to 
her fate ; but he, otherwise minded, caught her 
long hair between his teeth, and, with true sea- 
man's craft, saved her and himself. Angelo 
was carried across in a canvas bag hung to the 
neck of a sailor. Reaching the forecastle, they 
found a dry and sheltered spot, and wrapped 
themselves in the sailors' loose jackets, for a 
little warmth and comfort. The mate three 
times revisited the cabin, to bring thence va- 
rious valuables for Mrs. Hasty and Margaret ; 
and, last of all, a bottle of wine and some figs, 
that these weary ones might break their fast. 
Margaret now spoke to Mrs. Hasty of some- 
i8 



2/4 MARGARET FULLER. 

thing still left behind, more valuable than money. 
She would not, however, ask the mate to expose 
his life again. It is supposed that her words 
had reference to the manuscript of her work on 
Italy. From their new position, through the 
spray and rain they could see the shore, some 
hundreds of yards off. Men were seen on the 
beach, but there was nothing to indicate that an 
attempt would be made to save them. At nine 
o'clock it was thought that some one of the crew 
might possibly reach the shore by swimming, 
and, once there, make some effort to send them 
aid. Two of the sailors succeeded in doing this. 
Horace Sumner sprang after them, but sank, 
unable to struggle with the waves. A last de- 
vice was that of a plank, with handles of rope 
attached, upon which the passengers in turn 
might seat themselves, while a sailor, swimming 
behind, should guide their course. Mrs. Hasty, 
young and resolute, led the way in this experi- 
ment, the stout mate helping her, and landing 
her out of the very jaws of death. 

And here we fall back into that bootless wish- 
ing of which we spoke a little while ago. Oh 
that Margaret had been willing that the same 
means should be employed to bring her and 
hers to land ! Again and agam, to the very last 
moment, she was urged to try this way of escape, 
uncertam, but the only one. It was ail ni vain. 



THE BREAK-UP. 275 

Margaret would not be separated from her dear 
ones. Doubtless she continued for a time to 
hope that some assistance would reach them 
from the shore. The life-boat was even brought 
to the beach ; but no one was willing to man 
her, and the delusive hope aroused by her ap- 
pearance was soon extinguished. 

The day wore on ; the tide turned. The wreck 
would not outlast its return. The commanding 
officer made one last appeal to Margaret before 
leaving his post. To stay, he told her, was cer- 
tain and speedy death, as the ship must soon 
break up. He promised to take her child with 
him, and to give Celeste, Ossoli, and herself each 
the aid of an able seaman. Margaret still re- 
fused to be parted from child or husband. The 
crew were then told to " save themselves," and 
all but four jumped overboard. The commander 
and several of the seamen reached the shore in 
safety, though not without wounds and bruises. 

By three o'clock in the afternoon the break- 
ing-up was well in progress. Cabin and stern 
disappeared beneath the waves, and the fore- 
castle filled with water. The little group now 
took refuge on the deck, and stood about the 
foremast. Three able-bodied seamen remained 
with them, and one old sailor, homeward bound 
for good and all. The deck now parted from 
the hull, and rose and fell with the sweep of the 



276 MARGARET FULLER. 

waves. The final crash must come in a few 
minutes. The steward now took Angelo in his 
arms, promising to save him or die. At this 
very moment the foremast fell, and with it dis- 
appeared the deck and those who stood on it. 
The steward and the child were washed ashore 
soon after, dead, though not yet cold. The two 
Italians, Celeste and Ossoli, held for a moment 
by the rigging, but were swept off by the next 
wave. Margaret, last seen at the foot of the 
mast, in her white nightdress, with her" long 
hair hanging about her shoulders, is thought to 
have sunk at once. Two others, cook and car- 
penter, were able to save themselves by swim- 
ming, and might, alas ! have saved her, had she 
been minded to make the attempt. 

What strain of the heroic in her mind over- 
came the natural instinct to do and dare all 
upon the chance of saving her own life, and 
those so dear to her, we shall never know. 
No doubt the separation involved in any such 
attempt appeared to her an abandonment of her 
husband and child. Resting in this idea, she 
could more easily nerve herself to perish with 
them than to part from them. She and the 
babe were feeble creatures to be thrown upon 
the mercy of the waves, even with the promised 
aid. Her husband, young and strong, was faith- 
ful unto death, and would not leave her. Both 



THE END. 277 

of them, with fervent beHef, regarded death as 
the entrance to another Ufe, and surely, upon its 
very threshold, sought to do their best. So we 
must end our questioning and mourning con- 
cerning them with a silent acquiescence in what 
was to be. 

A friend of Margaret, who visited the scene 
on the day after the catastrophe, was persuaded 
that seven resolute men could have saved every 
soul on board the vessel. Through the absence 
of proper system and discipline, the life-boat, 
though applied for early on the morning of the 
wreck, did not arrive until one o'clock in the 
afternoon, when the sea had become so swollen 
by the storm that it was impossible to launch it. 
One hopes, but scarcely believes, that this state 
of things has been amended before this time. 

The bodies of Margaret and her husband were 
never found. That of Angeio was buried at 
Fire Island, with much mourning on the part 
of the surviving sailors, whose pet and play- 
mate he had been. It was afterwards removed 
to the cemetery at Mt. Auburn, where, beneath 
a marble monument which commemorates the 
life and death of his parents, and his own, he 
alone lies buried, the only one of Margaret's 
treasures that ever reached the country of her 
birth. 



278 MARGARET FULLER. 

Death gives an unexpected completeness to 
the view of individual character. The secret of 
a noble life is only fully unfolded when its out- 
ward envelope has met the fate of all things 
perishable. And so the mournful tragedy just 
recounted set its seal upon a career whose en- 
deavor and achievement the world is bound to 
hold dear. When all that could be known of 
Margaret was known, it became evident that 
there was 'nothing of her which was not heroic 
in intention ; nothing which, truly interpreted, 
could turn attention from a brilliant exterior to 
meaner traits allowed and concealed. That she 
had faults we need not deny; nor that, like 
other human beings, she needs must have said 
and done at times what she might afterwards 
have wished to have better said, better done. 
But as an example of one who, gifted with great 
powers, aspired only to their noblest use ; who, 
able to rule, sought rather to counsel and to 
help, — she deserves a place in the highest niche 
of her country's affection. As a woman who 
believed in women, her word is still an evangel 
of hope and inspiration to her sex. Her heart 
belonged to all of God's creatures, and most to 
what is noblest in them. Gray-headed men of 
to-day, the happy companions of her youth, grow 
young again while they speak of her. One of 
these,^ who is also one of her earlier biographers, 

1 James Freeman Clarke. 



HONOR DUE TO HER MEMORY. 279 

Still recalls her as the greatest soul he ever knew. 
Such a word, spoken with the weight of ripe 
wisdom and long experience, may fitly indicate 
to posterity the honor and reverence which be- 
long to the memory of Margaret Fuller. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

MARGARET FULLER'S LITERARY REMAINS. 

The preceding narrative has necessarily in- 
volved some consideration of the writings which 
gave its subject her place among the authors of 
her time. This consideration has been carefully 
interwoven with the story of the life which it 
was intended to illustrate, not to interrupt. 
With all this care, however, much has been 
left unsaid which should be said concerning 
the value of Margaret's contributions to the 
critical literature of her time. Of this, our pres- 
ent limits will allow us to make brief mention 
only. 

Margaret so lived in the life of her own day 
and generation, so keenly felt its good and ill, 
that many remember her as a woman whose 
spoken word and presence had in them a power 
which is but faintly imaged in her writings. 
Nor is this impression wholly a mistaken one- 
Certain it is that those who recall the enchant- 
ment of her conversation always maintain that 
the same charm is not to be found in the pro- 
ductions of her pen. Yet if we attentively read 



DEFECT OF STYLE. 281 

what she has left us, without this disparagement, 
we shall find that it entitles her to a position of 
honor among the prose writers of her time. 

The defects of her style are easily seen. They 
are in some degree the result of her assiduous 
study of foreign languages, in which the pure 
and severe idioms of the English tongue were 
sometimes lost sight of. Among them may be 
mentioned a want of measure in expression, and 
also something akin to the fault which is called 
on the stage " anti-chmax," by which some say- 
ing of weight and significance loses its point by 
being followed by another of equal emphasis. 
With all this, the high quality of her mind has 
left its stamp upon all that she gave to the read- 
ing public. Much of this first appeared in the 
form of contributions to the "Tribune," the "Dial," 
and other journals and magazines. Some of these 
papers are brief and even fragmentary ; but the 
shortest of them show careful study and consci- 
entious judgment. All of them are valuable for 
the admirable view which they present of the 
time in which Margaret wrote, of its difficulties 
and limitations, and of the hopes and convictions 
which, cherished then in the hearts of the few, 
were destined to make themselves a law to the 
conscience of the whole community. 

The most important of the more elaborate 
essays is undoubtedly that entitled " Woman in 



282 MARGARET FULLER. 

the Nineteenth Century," of which some account 
has already been given in the preceding pages. 
Of the four volumes published in 1875, one bears 
this title. A second, entitled " Art, Literature, 
and the Drama," contains many of the papers 
to which reference has been made in our brief 
account of Margaret and her contemporaries. 
From a third volume, entitled " Abroad and at 
Home," we have quoted some of her most inter- 
esting statements concerning the liberal move- 
ment in Europe, of which she was so ardent a 
friend and promoter. A last volume was collected 
and published in 1859, ^Y ^^^ brother, the Rev. 
Arthur B. Fuller, who served as an army chaplain 
in the War of the Southern Rebellion, and met 
his death on one of its battle-fields. This vol- 
ume is called " Life Without and Life Within," 
and is spoken of in Mr. Fuller's preface as con- 
taining, for the most part, matter never before 
given to the world in book form, and also poems 
and prose fragments never before published. 

In this volume, two papers seem to us to ask 
for especial mention. One of these is a review 
of Carlyle's "■ Cromwell," written when the book 
was fresh before the public. It deserves to be 
read for its felicity of diction, as well as for the 
justice of the thought expressed. If we take 
into consideration the immense popularity of 
Mr. Carlyle in America at the time when this 



CRITICISM OF CARLYLE. 22>t, 

work of his appeared, we shall prize the courage 
and firmness with which Margaret applies to it 
her keen power of criticism. The moral insuffi- 
ciency of the doctrine of the divine right of 
force is clearly shown by her ; and her own view 
of Cromwell's character maintains itself in spite 
of the vituperations with which Carlyle visits 
those who will not judge his hero as he does. 
She even returns these threats with the follow- 
ing humorous passage at arms : — 

" Nobody ever doubted his [Cromwell's] great 
abilities and force of will ; neither doubt we that 
he was made an instrument, just as he propo- 
seth. But as to looking on him through Mr. 
Carlyle's glasses, we shall not be sneered or 
stormed into it, unless he has other proof to offer 
than is shown yet. ... If he has become inter- 
ested in Oliver, or any other pet hyena, by study- 
ing his habits, is that any reason why we should 
admit him to our pantheon ? No ! our imbecility 
shall keep fast the door against anything short 
of proofs that in the hyena a god is incarnated. 
. . . We know you do with all your soul love 
kings and heroes, Mr. Carlyle, but we are not 
sure you would always know the Sauls from the 
Davids. We fear, if you had the disposal of 
the holy oil, you would be tempted to pour it 
on the head of him who is taller by a head than 
all his brethren." 



284 MARGARET FULLER. 

Of Cromwell himself, the following is Marga- 
ret's estimate : — 

" We see a man of strong and wise mind, edu- 
cated by the pressure of great occasions to the 
station of command. We see him wearing the 
religious garb which was the custom of the times, 
and even preaching to himself as well as others. 
But we never see Heaven answering his invoca- 
tions in any way that can interfere with the rise 
of his fortunes or the accompUshment of his 
plans. To ourselves, the tone of these religious 
holdings-forth is sufficiently expressive : they all 
ring hollow. . . . Again, we see Cromwell ruling 
with a strong arm, and carrying the spirit of mon- 
archy to an excess which no Stuart could surpass. 
Cromwell, indeed, is wise, and the king he pun- 
ished with death is foolish : Charles is faithless 
and Cromwell crafty ; we see no other difference. 
Cromwell does not in power abide by the princi- 
ples that led him to it ; and we cannot help, so 
rose-water imbecile are we, admiring those who 
do. To us it looks black for one who kills kings 
to grow to be more kingly than a king." 

The other paper of which we desire to speak 
in this connection, is one treating of the French 
novelists prominent at the time, and in particu- 
lar of Balzac, Eugene Sue, and De Vigny. Of 
these three names, the first alone retains the 
prestige which it had when Margaret wrote her 



ESSAY ON FRENCH NOVELISTS. 285 

essay. De Vigny, remarkable mostly for purity 
of sentiment, finish of style, and a power of set- 
ting and limiting his pictures, is a dozu/ozr d.uth or, 
and one read only in boudoirs of studious refine- 
ment. Sue, to whose motives Margaret gives 
the most humanitarian interpretation, has failed 
to commend his method to posterity. His au- 
topsy of a diseased state of society is thought to 
spread too widely the infection of the evils which 
he deplores. His intention is also too humane for 
the present day. The world of the last decade 
and of the present is too deeply wedded to the 
hard worship of money to be touched by the 
pathos of women who perish, or of men who 
starve. The grievances of the poor against the 
rich find to-day no one to give ear to them, and 
few even to utter them ; since those who escape 
starvation are too busy with beggary and plun- 
der to waste time in such useless musings. Of 
the three here cited, Balzac alone remains a king 
among noveHsts ; and Margaret's study of him 
imports as much to us to-day as it did to the 
world of her time. 

She begins by commenting upon the lamenta- 
tion general at that time, and not uncommon in 
this, over the depravity of taste and of life al- 
ready becoming familiar to the youth of America 
through the medium of the French novel. Con- 
cerning this, she says : — 



286 MARGARET FULLER. 

" It is useless to bewail what is the inevitable 
result of the movement of our time. Europe 
must pour her corruptions no less than her 
riches on our shores, both in the form of books 
and of living men. She cannot, if she would, 
check the tide which bears them hitherward. 
No defences are possible, on our vast extent of 
shore, that can preclude their ingress. Our 
only hope lies in rousing in our own community 
a soul of goodness, a wise aspiration, that shall 
give us strength to assimilate this unwholesome 
food to better substance, or to cast off its con- 
taminations." 

In view of the translation and republication of 
these works, Margaret remarks that it would be 
desirable for our people to know something of 
the position which the writers occupy in their 
own country. She says, moreover, what we 
would fain hope may be true to-day, that " our 
imitation of Europe does not yet go so far that 
the American milliner can be depended on to 
copy anything from the Parisian grisette, except 
her cap." 

Margaret speaks at some length of Balzac's 
novel " Le Pere Goriot," which she had just 
read. " The author," she says, " reminds one of 
the Spanish romancers in the fearlessness with 
which he takes mud into his hands, and dips his 
foot in slime. We cannot endure this when 



BALZAC'S '^PERE GORIOT.'' 28/ 

done, as by most Frenchmen, with an air of 
recklessness and gayety ; but Balzac does it with 
the stern manliness of a Spaniard." 

The conception of this novel appears to her 
" so sublime," that she compares its perusal to a 
walk through the catacombs, which the reader 
would not willingly have missed ; " though the 
light of day seems stained afterwards with the 
mould of horror and dismay." 

She infers from much of its tenor that Balzac 
was " familiar with that which makes the agony of 
poverty — its vulgarity. Dirt, confusion, shabby 
expedients, living to live, — these are what make 
poverty terrible and odious ; and in these Balzac 
would seem to have been steeped to the very 
lips." The skill with which he illustrates both 
the connection and the contrast between the 
depth of poverty and the height of luxury co- 
existing in Parisian life, is much dwelt upon 
by Margaret, as well as the praise-worthy fact 
that he depicts with equal faithfulness the vices 
developed by these opposite conditions. His 
insight' and mastery appear to her " admirable 
throughout," the characters " excellently drawn," 
especially that of the Pere Goriot, the father of 
two heartless women, for whom he has sacrificed 
everything, and who in turn sacrifice him with- 
out mercy to their own pleasures and ambitions. 
Admirable, too, she finds him "in his description 



2SS MARGARET FULLER. 

of look, tone, gesture. He has a keen sense of 
whatever is peculiar to the individual." With 
this acute appreciation of the great novelist's 
merits, Margaret unites an equally comprehen- 
sive perception of his fatal defects of character. 
His scepticism regarding virtue she calls fearful, 
his spirit Mephistophelian. " He delights to 
analyze, to classify. But he has no hatred for 
what is loathsome, no contempt for what is base, 
no love for what is lovely, no faith for what is 
noble. To him there is no virtue and no vice; 
men and women are more or less finely organ- 
ized ; noble and tender conduct is more agreeable 
than the reverse, — that is all." His novels show 
*' goodness, aspiration, the loveliest instincts, 
stifled, strangled by fate in the form of our own 
brute nature." 

Margaret did not, perhaps, foresee how popu- 
lar strangling of this kind was destined to be- 
come in the romance of the period following her 
own. 

Contrasting Eugene Sue with Balzac, she finds 
in the first an equal power of observation, dis- 
turbed by a more variable temperament, and en- 
hanced by " the heart and faith that Balzac lacks." 
She sees him standing, pen in hand, armed with 
this slight but keen weapon, as " the champion of 
poverty, innocence, and humanity against super- 
stition, selfishness, and prejudice." His works. 



SUE AND BALZAC. 289 

she thinks, with "all their strong points and 
brilliant decorations, may erelong be forgotten. 
Still, the writer's name shall be held in im- 
perishable honor as the teacher of the ignorant, 
the guardian of the weak." She sums up thus 
the merits of the two : " Balzac is the heartless 
surgeon, probing the wounds and describing the 
delirium of suffering men for the amusement of 
his students. Sue, a bold and glittering cru- 
sader, with endless ballads jingling in the silence 
of night before the battle." She finds both of 
them " much right and a good deal wrong," since 
their most virtuous personages are allowed to 
practise stratagems, falsehood, and violence, — a 
taint, she thinks, of the old regime under which 
"La belle France has worn rouge so long that 
the purest mountain air will not soon restore the 
natural hues to her complexion." 

Two ideal sketches, " The Rich Man " and 
" The Poor Man," are also preserved in this vol- 
ume, and are noticeable as treating of differences 
and difficulties which have rather become aggra- 
vated than diminished since Margaret's time. 
The " Rich Man " is a merchant, who " sees in 
commerce a representation of most important in- 
terests, a grand school that may teach the heart 
and soul of the civilized world to a willing, think- 
ing mind. He plays his part in the game, but 
not for himself alone. He sees the interests of 
19 



290 MARGARET FULLER. 

all mankind engaged with his, and remembers 
them while he furthers his own." In regard of 
his social status, she says : — 

" Our nation is not silly in striving for an aris- 
tocracy. Humanity longs for its upper classes. 
The silliness consists in making them out of 
clothes, equipage, and a servile imitation of for- 
eign manners, instead of the genuine elegance 
and distinction that can only be produced by 
genuine culture. . . . Our merchant shall be a 
real nobleman, whose noble manners spring from 
a noble mind ; his fashions from a sincere, intel- 
ligent love of the beautiful." 

" Margaret's * Poor Man ' is an industrious 
artisan, not* too poor to be sure of daily bread, 
cleanliness, and reasonable comfort. His ad- 
vantages will be in the harder training and 
deeper experience which his circumstances will 
involve. Suffering privation in his own per- 
son, he will, she thinks, feel for the sufferings of 
others. Having no adventitious aids to bring 
him into prominence, there will be small chance 
for him '' to escape a well-tempered modesty." 
He must learn enough to convince himself that 
mental growth and refinement are not secured 
by one set of employments, or lost through an- 
other. " Mahomet was not a wealthy merchant ; 
profound philosophers have ripened on the 
benches, not of the lawyers, but of the shoe- 



IDEAL POOR MAN. 291 

makers. It did not hurt Milton to be a school- 
master, nor Shakespeare to do the errands of a 
London playhouse. Yes, ' the mind is its own 
place ; ' and if it will keep that place, all doors 
will be opened from it," This ideal poor man 
must be *' religious, wise, dignified, and humble, 
grasping at nothing, claiming all ; willing to wait, 
never willing to give up; servile to none, the 
servant of all, — esteeming it the glory of a man 
to serve." Such a type of character, she tells 
us, is rare, but not unattainable. 

The poems in this volume may be termed fugi- 
tive pieces, rhymes twined and dropped in the 
pathway of a life too busy for much versification. 
They somewhat recall Mr. Emerson's manner, 
but have not the point and felicity which have 
made him scarcely less eminent in verse than in 
prose. They will, however, well repay a perusal. 
In order that this volume may not be wholly 
lacking in their grace, we subjoin two short 
poems, which wq have chosen from among a 
number of perhaps equal interest. One of these 
apostrophizes an artist whose rendering of her 
Greeks made him dear to her : ■ — 

FLAXMAN. 

We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone, 
Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought, 
And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought 
Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone, — 



292 MARGARET FULLER. 

A higher charm than modern culture won 

With all the wealth of metaphysic lore, 

Gifted to analyze, dissect, explore. 

A many-colored light flows from one sun ; 

Art, 'neath its beams, a motley thread has spun ; 

The prism modifies the perfect day ; 

But thou hast known such mediums to shun. 

And cast once more on life a pure, white ray. 

Absorbed in the creations of thy mind, 

Forgetting daily self, my truest self I find. 

The other poem interprets for us the signifi- 
cance of one of the few jewels which queenly 
Margaret deigned to wear, — a signet ring, bear- 
ing the image of Mercury : — 

MY SEAL-RING. 

Mercury has cast aside 

The signs of intellectual pride. 

Freely offers thee the soul : 

Art thou noble to receive ? 

Canst thou give or take the whole, 

Nobly promise, and believe } 

Then thou wholly human art, 

A spotless, radiant ruby heart, 

And the golden chain of love 

Has bound thee to the realm above. 

If there be one small, mean doubt, 

One serpent thought that fled not out, 

Take instead the serpent-rod, — 

Thou art neither man nor God. 

Guard thee from the powers of evil, — 

Who cannot trust, vows to the devil. 

Walk thy slow and spell-bound way ; 

Keep on thy mask, or shun the day, — 

Let go my hand upon the way. 



INDEX. 



Alcott, a. Bronson, his impres- 
sions of Margaret Fuller, 6i, 62 ; 
a contributor to the '' Dial," 72. 

Allston, Washington, as a poet and 
painter, •]'] ; Margaret Fuller's 
criticism of his paintings, 79-82. 

Arago, Margaret's estimate of, 196. 

Arconati, Marchesa Visconti, Mar- 
garet Fuller's acquaintance and 
friendship with, 212, 252, 261. 

Baillie, Joanna, Margaret Ful- 
ler's admiration of, and visit to, 
180, 181. 

Balzac, Margaret Fuller's estimate 
of the works of, 285-289. 

Belgiojoso, Princess, oi'ganizes the 
military hospitals at Rome, 243. 

Ben Lomond, Margaret Fuller's 
ascent of, and adventure on, 175- 
177. 

Beranger, 189; Margaret Fuller's 
mention of, 196. 

Berry, Miss, Margaret Fuller's 
visit to, 181. 

Berryer, IVT., Margaret Fuller's es- 
timate of, 197. 

Brook Farm Community, the, its 
origin and existence, 91, 97. 

Brougham, Lord, 179. 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 188, 
217, 261. 

Bryant. William Cullen, Margaret 
Fuller's estimate of, 164. 

Burgess, Tristam, 66. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 179 ; Marga- 
ret Fuller's intercourse with, and 
impressions of, 181-185 ; his 
impressions of Margaret Fuller, 



186 ; Margaret Fuller's review 
of his "Cromwell," 282-284. 

Cass, Lewis, American Envoy at 
Rome, 249. 

Chalmers, Dr., 172. 

Channing, Dr., Margaret Fuller's 
high appreciation of, 30 ; his in- 
tercourse with Margaret Fuller, 

63 
Channing, William Ellery, 72. ,. 
Channing, William Henry, 72 ; 

his portrait of Margaret Fuller, 

86-90. 
Chopin, 189; Margaret Fuller's 

mention of, 193. 
Clarke, James Freeman, early 

friendship of, with Margaret 

Fuller, 23, 24. 
Clarke, William Hull, his intimacy 

with Margaret Fuller at the 

Lakes, 118. 
Combe, Dr. Andrew, 172. 
Cranch, Christopher P., 72. 

Dana, Richard H., mention of, 
by Margaret Fuller, 67. 

Dawson, George, 177. 

De Balzac, 189. 

De Quincey, Margaret Fuller's de- 
scription of. 173. 

De Vigny, 284. 

" Dial," the, its life and death, 71, 
72 ; its contributors and their 
contributions, 72-76. 

Dickens, Charles, 178. 

Dumas, Alexandre {plre)^ 189. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, his ac- 
quaintance with Margaret Fuller, 
40 ; his first impressions of her, 



294 



INDEX. 



40, 41 ; his high appreciation of 1 
her social pre-eminence, 42 ; a! 
contributor to tlie '* Dial," 72 ; 
his estunation of Margaret Fuller | 
as an art critic, 83. j 

Fox, William, Margaret Fullers j 
estimate of, 178. 

Fi'eiligrath, iSo. 

Fuller, Margaret Crane, Mother 
of Margaret, 2 ; some account { 
of, 2, 7. 

Fuller, Sarah Margaret, early bio- j 
graphical sketches of, i ; her ' 
childhood and early youth, i-io; | 
birth and birthplace of, 2 ; her 
early Puritanical training, 4 ; her 
early course of studies and its 
effect, 5-7 ; begins the study of 
the Latin authors, 7 ; her inter- 
est in the study of Shakespeare, 
8 ; her earliest friendship, 8-10 ; 
leaves home for boarding-school, 
1 1 ; anecdotes of her school life 
at Groton, Mass., 11-16; bene- 
ficial effect of her school life and 
its trials, 17 ; end of her school 
days, and her return home, 18 ; 
her girlhood as described by Dr. 
Hedge, 19, 20 ; her passionate 
love for the beautiful, 20 ; her 
systematic and arduous pursuit 
of culturCj 20, 21 ; her portrai- 
ture of Miss Francis (Lydia 
Maria Child), 22; her friendship 
with James Freeman Clarke, 
24-28 ; her magnetic mfluence 
upon the minds of others^ 2^, 
26; the faulty appreciation JoT 
her character by the public, 27, 
38, 39 ; her study and compara- 
tive estimate of the German 
authors, 28 ; her intense interest 
in self-culture and questi( ns of 
public thought, 29, 30 ; her de- 
sire for intellectual improvement 
the outgrowth of personal rather 
than religious motives, 30^^31 ; 
her religious beliefs, 32-3S ; an- 
ecdote relating her many doubts 
and trials in the matter of re- 
1 gion, 35-38 ; her fii-st acquaint- 



ance with Ralph Waldo Emer- 
son, 40 ; satirical proclivities of, 
as mentioned by Mr. Emerson, 
41 ; her beneficent influence upon 
friends^ and iniimates, 42, jn ; 
an enthusiastic and appreciative' 
student of art, 44-47 ; notes on 
the AthenjEum Gallery of Sculp- 
ture by, 45 ; self-esteem one of 
her most prominent and valuable 
qualities, 47-49 ; removal from 
Cambridge to" Groton, 49 ; the 
literary activity of, in the seclu- 
sion of her Groton home, 5c, 59 ; 
extract from her correspondence 
while at Groton, 51-54; her_ 
meeting with, and sincere friead- 
ship for, Harriet Martineau, 5^, 
55; her very serious illness, 55, 
56 ; her grief at the death of her 
father, 56 ; the straitened cir- 
cumstances of, attendant on her 



father's death, 56, 



finds 



prayer a constant source of relief 
and support, 57; her devotion 
to her family, 57-59; her re- 
moval to Bost n, 60, 61 ; a 
teacher in Mr. Alcott's school, 
61 ; brief sketch of her labors while 
in Boston, 62-65 ; her connec- 
tion with Greene Street School, 
Providence, R. I., 65 ; brief ac- 
count of her life and acquaint- 
ances in Providence, 66, 67 ; ex- 
tract from her farewell address to 
her pupils at Providence, 68, 69 ; 
her criticism of Harriet Marii.- 
neau- shock on America, .69, 7^ 
accepts the editorship of the 
''Dial," 70; extract from her 
contriljutions to the " Dial," 74- 
j"; ; her estimate of Washington 
Allston's pictures, 76, 79-83; her 
friendship with Mr. Emerson 
the outgrowth of mutual esteem 
rather than of personal sympa- 
thy, 84, 85 ; her relations with 
William Henry Channing, 86- 
90 ; her relation to tlie Transcen- 
dental movement in New Eng- 
land, 92-9(x; her visit to the 
Brook Farm Community, 97, 



INDEX. 



295 



98 ; her love for little children, 
100 ; her visit to Concord after 
the death of Ralph Waldo Em- 
erson's son, TGI ; extracts from 
her journal, 101-103 ; her con- 
versations in Boston, 104-11^ 
the extraordinary success of lier 
undertaking, loS ; the second 
series of her conversations, iii, 
IJ4 ; variety of topics discussed 
in" her conversations, 114; her 
summer on the jLakes, 115 ; ex- 
tracts from her record of the 
journey, 11 5-1 25 ; her visit to, 
and impressions of, the Indians, 
120-125 ; the composition of her 
" Summer on the Lakes," 126, 
127 ; her engagement on the 
"New York Tribune," and con- 
sequent close of her New Eng- 
land life, 127 ; her intercourse 
with Horace Greeley, 130, 131 ; 
her contributions to the " Trib^ 
une," 133 ; remarks on some of 
her literary contemporaries, 134, 
135 ; her criticism of George 
Sand, 137-139; her residence at 
the Greeley mansion, 130, 140, 
141 ; her entrance into New York 
society, 142; her visits to the 
•women's prison at Sing Sing, 
and address to its inmates, 143- 
146 ; visits Blackwell's Island, 
146 ; letters of, to her brothers, 
147-150; pubMcation of her 
" Woman in the Nineteenth 
Century," 147, 149, 150 ; brief 
review of the work, 151-158; 
essay on American Literature, 
159-167, 282 ; her criticism of 
contemporary authors, 162-167; 
concerning the justice of her 
criticism, 168, i6g ; her visit 
to Europe, 170-277 ; her an- 
ticipations of the journey, 170, 
171 ; the voyage and arrival at 
Liverpool, 171 ; her visit to the 
lake country, 171, 172; impres- 
sions of her visi to Wordsworth, 
172; renewal of her intercourse 
with Harriet Martineau, 172; 
her visi^to Edinburgh and meet- 



ing with literary men, 172, 173; 
her impression of De Quincey, 
173 ; her meditations on Mary, 
Queen of Scots, while in Scot- 
Jcind, 174; makes an excursion 
to the Highlands, 174; her as- 
cent to Ben Lomond, 175-177; 
her comparison of George Daw- 
son, William Fox, and James 
Martineau with Dr. Channing 
and Theodore Parker, 177; her 
remarks on the social condition 
of England, 179, 180 ; visits the 
different institutions of science, 
art, and benevolence in London, 
180 ; mention of her visit to 
Joanna Baillie, 180, iSi ; her 
visit to Miss Berry, 181 ; her 
intercourse with Thomas Car- 
lyle, 180-185 ; Thomas Carlyle's 
impressions of, 186 ; her high 
estimation of Mazzini and his 
work, 186-188 ; her visit to P.: ris 
and her reception there, 189, 
190 ; hr visit to and impressions 
of George Sand, 1 91-193; her 
acquaintance with Chopin, 193 ; 
her remarks on the French stage 
and its actors, 191-196 ; cahs 
upon Lamennais, 196; her men- 
tion of Beranger, 196 ; visits the 
Chamber of Deputies, 197 ; at- 
tends a ball at the Tuileries, and 
the Italian opera in Paris, 197, 
198 ; her acquaintance with Al- 
exandre Vattemare, 198 ; her 
visits to places of interest in 
Paris, and her impressions of 
them, 198, 199 ; her journey to 
Italy, 200, 201 ; visits Rome, 
202 ; her visits to the studios 
and galleries of Rome, 206 ; her 
study of and remarks upon the 
old masters, 206, 207 : her mter- 
est in the political condition of 
Italy, 207 ; impressions and rem- 
iniscences of her visits to Peru- 
gia, Bologna, Florence, Ravenna, 
Venice, Milan, and other cities 
of Northern Italy, 208-212; her 
mention of a state ball on the 
Grand Canal at Venice, 210; 



296 



INDEX. 



her estimation of Manzoni, 211 ; 
visits the Italian lakes and 
Switzerland, 212 ; her grief and 
indignation at the unhappy po- 
litical condition in Italy, 213, 
214; visits Pavia, Parma, and 
Modena, 214; revisits Florence 
on her way to Rome, 214; her 
zeal for Italian freedom, 217; 
her return to Rome, 218 ; remi- 
niscences of her delightful experi- 
ences during her second visit to 
Rome, 218-220; her many dis- 
comforts during the rainy sea- 
son, 221-223 ; leaves Rome for 
Aquila. 231 ; her marriage with 
Marchese Ossoli, 232 ; her first 
meeting and subsequent inti- 
macy with him, 233, 234 ; leaves 
Aquila for Rieti, 235 ; birth of 
her son, Angelo Eugene Ossoli, 
236 ; leaves her child at Rieti 
and returns to Rome, 238 ; ex- 
tract from a letter to her mother, 
238 ; her anxiety about her child, 
241, 242; her intercourse with 
Mazzini, 243 ; her care of the 
hospitals, 244-246; her anxiety 
about her husband and child 
during the siege of Rome, 246 ; 
her mention of the bombardment 
and final surrender of Rome, 
247, 248 ; has a severe sickness 
and confides the story of her 
marriage to Mrs, Story and 
Lewis Cass, 249, 25 -- : joins her 
husband at his post, 250 ; the 
sickness of her child, 251 ; com- 
ment in both Italy and America 
attendant upon the acknowledg- 
ment of her marriage, 251, 252 ; 
extracts from her correspond- 
ence regarding her marriage, 
252, 253 ; revisits Perugia with 
her husband a.nd child, 253; 
passes the winter in Florence, 
253 ; applies herself to wntincj 
a history of the Revolution in 
Italy, 255 ; the character ot her 
husband and their devotion to 
each other, 256, 257; her liter- 
ary occupation during her stay 



at Florence, 258 ; reminiscences 
of her visit to the Duomo at 
Florence, 258, 259 ; her home 
life and surroundings, 259, 260 ; 
her intimacy with Horace Sum- 
ner and estimate of him, 260, 
261 ; anecdotes showing her love 
for and influence upon the 
people of Italy, 262-264 ; her 
preparations for and anticipa- 
tions of her return to America, 
265, 266 ; extract from her last 
letter to her mother, 266, 267 ; 
engages passage in the barque 
"Elizabeth" from Leghorn, 267 ; 
her presentiment and foreboding 
of misfortune, 268, 269 ; death 
of the captain and subsequent 
sickness of her child, 269, 270 ; 
minor incidents of the voyage 
as related by Mrs. Hast}', 270 ; 
her calmness and care for her 
child at the time of the ship- 
wreck, 272; her deathj 27_4^; 
brief testimony to her high chair 
acter and aspirations, 278; the 
literary remains of, 280-292 ; 
brief criticism of her styje,,^^!^. 
" Woman in the Nineteenth 
Century," 2S2 ; "Life Withoirf^ 
anTJ Life Withifi," 282; extracts \ 
from her review of Carlyle's 
" Cromwell," 282-2S4 ; extracts 
from a paper on the prominent 
French novelists of her day, 
284-289; her appreciation of the 
writings of Balzac, 286-288 ; 
her contrast of Balzac with Eu- 
gene Sue, 288, 289 ; mention of 
her "Rich Man," and "Poor 
Man," with extracts, 2S9-291 ; 
"Flaxman" and "My Seal- 
Ring," two short poems by, 
291, 292. 
Fuller, Timothy, father of Marga- 
ret, 2 ; some account of, 2 ; Mar- 
garet's estimation of, 3; his 
death, 56. 

Garibaldi, his devotion to the 
cause of freedom in Italy, 247, 
248. 



INDEX. 



297 



Gonzaga, Marquis Guerrieri, 213. 

Greeley, Horace, his interest in 
Margaret Fuller and subsequent 
engagement of her on the staff 
of ^he " Tribune," 129, 130 ; his 
acquaintance with and estima- 
tion of Margaret Fuller, 130- 
132. 

Guizot, 1S9. 

Gurney, Joseph John, 67. 

Hasty, Mrs., a fellow-passenger 
of Margaret Fuller on the barque 
** Elizabeth," for America, 26S ; 
her account of the voyage and 
subsequent loss of the vessel, 
270-274 ; her rescue from the 
wreck, 274. 

Hedge, Dr., early friendship of, 
with Margaret Fuller, 19, 20. 

Houghton, Lord, 179. 

Hugo, Victor, 1S9. 

Hurlbut, William Henry, his re- 
marks upon the character of 
Marchese Ossoli and relations 
with his wife, 257, 258; his de- 
scription of Margaret Fuller's 
home life and surroundings at 
Florence, 259, 260. 

Iron Duke, the, 179. 

Italy, the political condition of, in 
1847, 207, 213, 216, 217, 223- 
230, 238-241 ; popular revolt in, 
229, 230. 

Kenyon, John, 178. 

Lamennais, Margaret Fuller's 
mention of, 196. 

Level rier, Margaret Fuller's men- 
tion of, 197. 

Liszt, 1S9. 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 
Margaret Fuller's criticism on, 
164-167. 

Louis Philippe, 190. 

Lowell, James Russell, his satire 
on Margaret Fuller in the "Fable 
for Critics," 39, ^o ; a criticism 
on, by Margaret Fuller, 167. 



Manzoni, Margaret Fuller's esti- 
mate of, 211. 

Mario tti, 1S8. 

Martineau, Harriet, her efforts to 
introduce Margaret FuUef to 
Mr. Emerson, 40 ; publication 
of her book on America, 69; 
Margaret Fuller's visit to, while 
in Scotland, 172. 

Martineau, James, Margaret Ful- 
ler's estimate of, 178. 

Mazzini, his connection with works 
of benevolence, iSo; Margaret 
Fuller's high estimation of, 186- 
1S8, 243 ; his letter to Pope Pius 
on the political condition of 
Italy, 225-228. 

Mickiewicz, 193. 

Mihnan, Dean, Margaret Fuller's 
description of, 172. 

Moore, Thomas, 179. 

Neal, John, 66. 
Norton, Mrs., 179. 

Ossoli, Marchese, the personal de- 
scription of, 233 ; his tirst meet- 
ing with Margaret Fuller, 233 ; 
his marriage, 234 ; reasons for 
not making his marriage public, 
234, 235 ; his zeal for the cause 
of freedom, 234, 235, 246 ; his 
personal character and love for 
his wife as described by William 
Henry Hurlbut, 257, 258 ; his 
calmness and forgetfulness of 
self at the time of the shipwreck, 
272 ; his death, 274. 

Paris, the city of, and its celeb- 
rities at the time of Margaret 
Fuller's visit, 189, 190. 

Parker, Theodore, 72 ; Margaret 
Fuller's high estimation of, 177. 

Peabody, Miss, the first of Mar- 
garet Fuller's conversations held 
at the rooms of, 105, 106. 

Pius, Pope, 207 ; first symptoms 
of his unpopularity at Rome, 
221 ; his desertion of the cause 
of freedom, 230 ; his flight from 
Rome, 239. 



298 



INDEX. 



Rachel, the queen of the tragic 
stage at Paris, 189 ; Margaret 
Fuller's estimate of her dramatic 
powers, 195, 196. 

Ripley, George, organizes the 
Brook Farm Community, 91. 

Rogers, Samuel, 17S. 

Rome, at the time of Margaret's 
visit in 1S47, 202, 203 ; celebra- 
tion of the birthday of, 2oil ; 
celebration of the creation of the 
National Guard at, 215 ; review 
of the Civic Guard at, 218 ; evi- 
dence of political reform and 
celebration of the event at, 223, 
224 ; the political situation and 
popular excitement at, 224, 225; 
opening of the Constitutional As- 
sembly at, 240 ; universal enthu- 
siasm at the formation of a Ro- 
man republic, 240 ; its relations 
with France, 242, 243 ; the siege 
of, 243-247 ; its surrender, 247, 
248. 

Sand, George, as a woman and a 
writer, 135-137 ; her literary su- 



premacy in Paris, 189 ; Margaret 

Fuller's visit to, and portrait of, 

191-193. 
Smith, Sydney, 178. 
Sue, Eugene, Margaret Fuller's 

estimate of his writings, 288, 

289. 
Sumner. Horaca, his intimacy with 

Margaret Fuller at Venice, 260, 

261, 2G8 ; his death, 274. 
Sutherland, Duchess of, 179, 

Tagliom, 210. 
Thackeray, William M., 178. 
Transcendentalism, its^^th and- 
•"^geveJopmentjjjo, 91, 95. 

Vattemare, Alexandre, Mar- 
garet Fuller's intercourse with, 

198. 

Wilkinson, James Garth, 
INIargaret Fuller's estimate of, 
188. 

W^ordsworth, William, Margaret 
Fuller's visit to, 172. 



University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 



MARGARET FULLER'S WORKS AND MEMOIRS. 



WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, and 

kindred papers relating to the Sphere, Condition, and Duties of Woman. 
Edited by her brother, Arthur B. Fuller, with an Introduction 
by Horace Greeley. In i vol. i6mo. $1.50. 

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Margaret Fuller will be remembered as one of the "Great Conversers," 
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man's rival nor his foe, but his complement. As she herself said, she believed 
that the development of one ccjuld not be affected without that of the other. 
Her words, so noble in tone, so moderate in spirit, so eloquent in utterance, 
should not be forgotten by her sisters. Horace Greeley, in his introduction to her 
" Woman in the Nineteenth Century," says : " She was one of the earliest, as 
well as ablest, among American women to demand for her sex equality before the 
law with her titluar lord and master. Her writings on this subject have the force 
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is due to her memory, as well as to the great and living cause of which she was so 
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The Story of this rich, sad, striving, unsatisfied life, with its depths of emotion 
and its surface sparkling and glowing, is told tenderly and reverently by her 
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John Randolph, Jackson and other eminent persons, and sketches of old Washington 
and old Boston society. The kindly pen of the author is never dipped in gall — he 
remembers the pleasing aspects of character, and his stories and anecdotes are told in 
the best of humor and leave no sting. The book is of a kind which v.'e are not likely 
to have again, for the men of Mr. Quincy's generation, those at least who had his 
social opportunities, are nearly all gone. These pictures of old social and political 
conditions are especially suggestive as reminding us that a single life, only lately 
closed, linked us with days, events and men that were a part of our early history and 
appear remote because of the multitude of changes that have transformed society in 
the interval." — Boston Journal. 

WHIST, OR BUMBLEPUPPY? By Pembridge. 

From the Second London Edition. i6mo. Cloth. Price, .50 

Definition of Bumblepuppy— Bumblepuppy is persisting to play whist, eitliei 
in utter ignorance of all its known principles, or in defiance of them, or both. 

"'Whist, or Bumblepuppy?' is one of the most entertaining, and at the same 
time one of the soundest books on whist ever written. Its drollery may blind some 
readers to the value of its advice; no man who knows anything about whist, how- 
ever, will fail to read it with interest, and few will fail to read it with advantage. 
Upon the ordinary rules of whist, Pembridge supplies much sensible and thor- 
oughly amusing comment. The best player in the world may gain from his ob- 
servations, and a mediocre player can scarcely find a better counsellor. There is 
scarcely au opinion expressed with which we do not coincide.'' — London Sunday 
Times. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROS- 

SETTI. By T. Hall Caine. With Portrait. One vol. 

8vo. Cloth, gilt. Price, $3-00 

"Mr.Caine's 'Recollections of Rossetti' throws light upon many events in Ros- 

setti's life over which there hung a veil of mystery A book that must 

survive." — Lo7idon A the7i(eu77t. 



^*^ Our publications are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent 
post-paid on receipt of advertised price. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



MESSES. EGBERTS BEOTHEES' PUBLIOATIOITS. 

JFamous asiamen Series. 
GEORGE ELIOT. 

By MATHILDE BLIND. 

One vol. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $i.oo. 



" Messrs. Roberts Brothers begin a series of Biographies of Famous 
Women with a life of George Eliot, b^' Mathilde Blind. The idea of the 
series is an excellent one, and the reputation of its publishers is a guarantee 
for its adequate execution. This book contains about three hundred pages in 
open type, and pot only collects and condenses the main facts that are known 
in regard to the history of George Eliot, but supplies other material from 
personal research. It is agreeably written, and with a good idea of propor- 
tion in a memoir of its size. The critical study of its subject's works, which 
is made in the order of their appearance, is particularly well done. In fact, 
good taste and good judgment pervade the memoir throughout." — Saturday 
Evening- Gazette. 

" Miss Blind's little book is written with admirable good taste and judg- 
ment, and with notable self-restraint. It does not weary the reader with 
critical discursiveness, nor with attempts to search out high-flown meanings 
and recondite oracles in the plain 'yea' and 'nay' of life. It is a graceful 
and unpretentious little biography, and tells all that need be told concerning 
one of the greatest writers of the time. It is a deeply interesting if not 
fascinating woman whom Miss Blind presents," says the New York 
Tribti7ie. 

" Miss Blind's little biographical study of George Eliot is written with 
sympathy and good taste, and is very welcome. It gives us a graphic if not 
elaborate sketch of the personality and development of the great novelist, is 
particularly full and authentic concerning her earlier years, fells enough of 
the leading motives in her work to give the general reader a lucid idea of the 
true drift and purpose of her art, and analyzes carefully her various writings, 
with no attempt at profound criticism or fine writing, but with appreciation, 
insight, and a clear grasp of those underlying psychological principles which 
are so closely interwoven in every production that came from her pen." — 
Traveller. 

" The lives of few great writers have attracted more curiosity and specula- 
tion than that of George Eliot. Had she only lived earlier in the century 
she might easily have become the centre of a mythos. As it is, many of the 
anecdotes commonly repeated about her are made up largely of fable. It is, 
therefore, well, before it is too late, to reduce the true story of her career to 
the lowest terms, and this service has been well done by the author of the 
present volume." — Philadelphia Press. 

Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of 
price, by the publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. Boston. 



THE WISDOM OF THE BRAHMIN. A Didactic 
Poem. Translated from the German of Friedrich Ruck- 
ert. By Chas. T. Brooks. Six cantos. i6mo. Cloth. 
Price, $1.25 

"The Brahmin," says the translator, " is a poem of vast range, expressing the 
world-wisdom which the author had been for years storing up in his large heart, and 
evolving out of his creative soul." vSays Dr. Beyer, in his Life of Riickert : " 'The 
Wisdorn of the Brahmin ' is a poetic house-treasure of which our nation may justly 
be proud. So much has been said and sung of late years of ' The Light of Asia,'_the 
"Sympathy of Religions,' and the like, that the present seemed to be an auspicious 
moment to venture a volume of Ruckert's greatest work." 

" 'These twenty books are a sea of thoughts and contemplations full of Brahminic 
tranquility and German depth and fullness, in simple gnomes, sentences, epigrams, 
parables, fables and tales.' Gottsschall declares the work to be ' a poetic treasure of 
which the German nation may justly be proud.' The translator, speaking of his own 
expei-iences, says the poem has affected him as ' a sparkling flood of heart-searching 
and soul-lifting thought and sentiment, such as no other work within our knowledge 
has ever presented.' " — Home jfournal. 



SOCRATES. The Apology and Crito of Plato, and the 
Phaedo of Plato. Uniform with "Marcus Aurelius," 
"Imitation of Christ," etc. i8mo. Flexible cloth, red 
edges. Price, 50 cents each. Two series in one volume. 
Cloth, red edges. Price, 75 cents. 

" If, as is strongly asserted, there may be found^n the writings of Plato all the 
wisdom and learning of the ancients, as well as the treasure-house from which all 
succeeding writers have borrowed their best ideas, then are these little books worth 
their weight in gold, for they contain some of the choicest gems to be found in the 
collected works of the famous Greek philosopher. They are companion volumes, 
the text being taken unabridged from Professor Jewett's revised translation of Plato. 
They tell the whole story of the trial, imprisonment and death of Socrates. The 
Apology gives the defence, the Crito relates the offer of escape, the Phaedo describes 
the last hours. The more studiously and the more frequently these books are read 
the more keen will be the appreciation of their intellectual and moral.excellence." — 
Providence Jotirnal. 



JEAN INGELOWS NOVELS. Off the Skelligs; 
Fated to be Free; Sarah de Berenger; Don John. 
A new edition. 4 vols. i6mo. Imitation half calf. 
Price, $5.00 



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post-paid on receipt of advertised price. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



A LITTLE PILGRIM. Reprinted from Macmillan's 

Magazine. i6mo. Cloth. Red edges. Price, .... $ .75 

"An exquisitely written little sketch is found in that remarkable production, 'The 
Little Pilgrim,' which is just now attracting much attention both in Europe and 
America. It is highly imaginative in its scope, representing one of the world-worn 
and weary pilgrims _of our earthly sphere as entering upon the delights of heaven 
after death. The picture of heaven is drawn with the rarest delicacy and refinement, 
and is in agreeable contrast in this respect to the material sketch of this future home 
furnished in Miss Stuart Phelps's well-remembered 'Gates Ajar.' The book will be 
a balm to the heart of many readers who are in accord with the failh of its author; 
and to others its readmg will afford rare pleasure from the exceeding beauty and 
affecting simplicity of its almost perfect literary style." — Saturday Evenittg Gazette. 

" The life beyond the grave, when the short life in this world is ended, is to many 
a source of dread — to all a mystery. 'A Little Pilgrim' has apparently solved it, 
and, indeed, it seems on reading this little^ book as if there were a great probability 
about it. A soft, gentle tone pervades its every sentence, and one cannot read it 
without feeling refreshed and strengthened." — The Alta California. 

THE GREAT EPICS OF MEDIiEVAL GERMANY. 

An Outline of their Contents and History. By George 
Theodore Dippold, Professor at Boston University and 
Wellesley College. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50 

Professor Francis J. Child, of Harvard College, says : " It is an excellent account 
of the chief German heroic poems of the Middle Ages, accompanied with spirited 
translations. It is a book which gives both a brief and popular, and also an accurate, 
account of this important section of literature, and will be very welcome here and at 
other colleges." 

"No student of modern literature, and above all no student who aims to under- 
stand the literary development of Europe in its fullest range, can leave this rich and 
ample world of early song unexplored. To all such Professor Dippold's book will 
have the value of a trustworthy guide. _ . . . It has all the interest of a 
chapter in the growth of the hun^n mind into comprehension of the universe and of 
itself, and it has the pervading charm of the vast realm of poetry through which it 
moves." — Christian Union. 



MY HOUSEHOLD OF PETS. By Theophile Gautier. 
Translated from the French by Susan Coolidge. With 
illustrations by Frank Rogers. i6mo. Cloth. Price, . ^1.25 

" This little book will interest lovers of animals, and the quaint style in which 
M. Gautier tells of the wisdom of his household pets v.ill please every one. The 
translator, too, is happy in her work, for she has succeeded in rendering the text into 
English without loss cf the French tone, which makes it fascinating. These house- 
hold pets consisted of white and black cats, dogs, chameleons, lizards, magpies, and 
horses, each of which has a character and story of its own. Illustrations and a pretty 
binding add to the attractions of the volume.'- — Worcester Sj>y. 

"The ease and elegance of Theophile Gautier's diction is wonderful, and the 
translator has preserved the charm of the French author with far more than the 
average fidelity. ' My Household of Pets ' is a book which can be read with pleasure 
by young and old. It is a charming volume. — St. Louis Spectator. 



^*^ Our publications are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent 
post-paid on receipt of advertised price. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



PHYLLIS BROWNE. A Story. By Flora L. Shaw. 

Author of "Castle Blair" and "Hector." i6mo. Cloth. 
Illustrated. Price, $i.oo 

"'Caslle Blair' and 'Hector' are such good stories that a third, by the same 
author, Flora L. Shaw, will be equally welcomed. 'Hector' was one of the most 
charming books ever written about a boy. ' Phyllis Browne ' is the new story. She 
is evidently the author's ideal girl, as Hector was her ideal boy, and a noble, splendid 
girl she is. Yet the book is not a child's book ; it is about children, but not for them. 
The story is far more interesting than most novels are, and far more exciting. The 
rash generosity of the children is beautiful; their free, trustful lives are noble and 
sweet; but when they undertake to right social wrongs, and gallantly set their brave 
hearts and childish inexperience against the established wrongs of society, they come 
to grief, but in no commonplace way. Their dangers are as unusual and on as large 
a scale as their characters and courage are. The book is full of tender and loving 
things; it makes the heart larger, and brings back the splendid dreams of one's own 
youth," says the Boston correspondent of the Worcester Spy, 



THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. A Romance. By 
Harriet Prescott Spofford, author of "The Amber 
Gods," "The Thief in the Night," etc. i6mo. Cloth. Price, ^i.oo 

"This is the latest offering of the author of 'The Amber Gods,' and it is as odd as 
striking, and as impressive in its shadowy implication as anything she has ever 
■written. Handled differently, the incidents would seem theatrical; as told by Mrs. 
Spofford, the story is like the vivid passages of a drama from which, once seen, you 
cannot escape. Pleasant or unpleasant they force themselves upon the consideration 
and lay hold of the imagination. So it is with ' The Marquis of Carabas.' " — Chicago 
Inter-Ocean. 

" 'The Marquis of Carabas,' by Harriet Prescott Spofford, is a work of unique 
quality, being really a poem in the guise of a prose novel. The thought is tense and 
sublimated, and the style glowing, musical and polished. There is abundant inven- 
tion in the story, and nothing of common-place and indolent imitation which in the 
case of ordinary raconteurs contributes so largely to swell the bulk of results. The 
narrative fascinates one, but the fascination is not of a stream flowing largely and 
naturally through the landscape ; it is rather that of silver bells, whose clear, finely 
modulated chimes touch the finer issues of feeling, but not without some obtrusive 
sense of study and premeditation." — Hoine Journal. 



LANDOR'S IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS. 

With a portrait. A new edition. 5 volumes. i6mo. 

Cloth. Oxford style. Price, ^5.00 

Imitation half calf, 6.25 



*^* Our publications are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent 
post-paid on receipt of advertised price. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS' 



A collection of world-renowned works selected from the 
/iteratures of all nations, printed from new type in the best 
manner, and neatly and durably bound. Handy books, con- 
venient to hold, and an ornament to the library shelves. 

READY AND IN PREPARATION. 
Sir Walter Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel," 
"Marmion," and "The Lady of the Lake." The 
three poems in one volume. 

" There are no books for boys like these poems by Sir Walter 
Scott. Every boy likes them, if they are not put into his hands 
too late. T/iey surpass everything for boy readitig.'''' — Ralph 
Waldo Emerson. 

Oliver Goldsmith's "The Vicar of Wakefield." 
With Illustrations by Mulready. 

Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe." With Illustrations by 
Stothard. 

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's "Paul and Virginia." 
With Illustrations by Lalauze. 

Southey's "Life of Nelson." With Illustrations by 
Birket Foster. 

Voltaire's "Life of Charles the Twelfth." With 
Maps and Portraits. 

Maria Edgeworth's " Classic Tales." With a bio- 
graphical Sketch by Grace A. Oliver. 

Lord Macaulay's " Lays of Ancient Rome." With 
a Biographical Sketch and Illustrations. 

Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress." With all of the origi- 
nal Illustrations in fac-simile. 

Classic Heroic Ballads. Edited by the Editor of 
"Quiet Hours." 

Classic Tales. By Anna Letitia Barbauld. With a 
Biographical Sketch by Grace A. Oliver. 

Classic Tales. By Ann and Jane Taylor. With a 
Biographical Sketch by Grace A. Oliver. 

AND OTHERS. 



